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THE MODERN DEITY. 



The Modern Deity 



BY 



THOMAS WALKER MALCOLM 

PASTOR OF ST. ANDREW'S PRESBT^TERIAN CHURCH 
DETROIT, MICHIGAN 



INTRODUCTION BY 
JAMES MORRISON BARKLEY, D. D. 
FORMER MODERATOR OF THE GENERAL ASSEM- 
BLY OF THE PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH 
IN THE U. S. A. 



THE GRISWOLD PRESS 
DETROIT 



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.Mas 



Copyright, 191), By T. W. Malcolm 



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TO 

Qty* ffltttutri) of My father mb Mattyv 

Who early taught me the value of living "not by 

bread alone but by every word that 

proceedeth out of the mouth 

of God; 3 

I dedicate this little volume 

In sorrowful and affectionate remembrance 

of their love and virtues. 



PREFATORY NOTE. 

This little volume is a study of the Moral, 
Religious and Sociological conditions of our age. 
It is an attempt to show the trend of the times, 
and to offer an antidote. There is no effort at 
literary finish; simply an earnest, sober and un- 
prejudiced setting forth of the causes of the 
fretted life of to-day. It is published in response 
to urgent requests with the hope that it may serve 
the purpose for which it was intended, namely, 
to persuade us that 

"We are not here to play, to dream, to drift. 
We have hard work to do, and loads to lift. 
Shun not the struggle ; face it, 'tis God's gift — 

BE STRONG. 

T. W. M. 



INTRODUCTION. 

My friend, Mr. Malcolm, has struck a theme 
that cries for treatment. Modern Baalism is no 
more moral or modest or merciful than its 
ancient prototype of the days of Ahab and Jeze- 
bel. It needs now, as it needed then, rough 
handling. And the writer whose pages follow, 
has turned loose upon it a vehement and torren- 
tial earnestness of denunciation. The stream of 
his ideas and the rush of his convictions are so 
strong and swift that they cannot "purl along in 
the ditched out channel of conventional phrase. " 
They overflow the banks. They cut their own 
channel. At times, they toss aside the elegance, 
and even the accuracy, of style to rush right on 
to the author's objective. Yet the work is not 
devoid of style. In places it is truly eloquent; 
and it is enriched by choice and copious quota- 
tions. In temper, it is strongly and sanely opti- 
mistic. Discrediting the dread evils that fret our 
times, it rises to positiveness in pointing the path- 
way of relief in a return to righteousness and 
soberness and truth. 

I commend it to the sympathetic perusal and 
practice of all who would follow an earnest mind 
on a great theme. 

James Morrison Barkley. 



The Modern Deity. 



OUARANTANIA, or as it is called in Ar- 
abic, Kuruntul, a mountainous region in 
the far east, between Jerusalem and 
Jericho, is not so familiar a word as Gettysburg 
or Waterloo. Historians never record it among 
the names of the world's great battlefields. Yet, 
battlefield it was. And if we reckon the fierce- 
ness of the conflict, the issues at stake, and the 
beneficent results accruing, we must give it a 
large and conspicuous place in our thought. The 
name, however, is traditional, but the battle is 
fact. It was bloodless, to be sure. Great con- 
quests are always so. Not armies drawn up with 
"reeking tube and iron shard." Just two contest- 
ants. Two men? Yes, and no. A Man and an 
angel— a fallen angel. Yea, the Prince of Peace 
and the Prince of Devils. Though bloodless, 
it was not weaponless. A word is often mightier 
than a sword. This is absolutely so when it is 
the Word of God. Keener than a two-edged 
Damascus blade was the instrument by which the 
enemy was utterly vanquished. What a terrific 

11 



THE MODERN DEITY. 

and decisive thrust : "It is written, man shall not 
live by bread alone, but by every word that pro- 
ceedeth out of the mouth of God." 

"It is written." Where? In Deuteronomy 
eighth chapter third verse; the second giving of 
the law ; the recapitulation of man's experience in 
his relationship with God. It was the Divine 
word that came to Israel through Moses, and in 
which the Son of God in His wilderness tempta- 
tion made answer to Satan's suggestion, that He 
put His material wants first. If He were the 
Messiah why should He go hungry? Why not 
thrust aside all such weak, fleshly conditions by 
His power? The idea of the King of Israel 
suffering from hunger! It was out of harmony 
with the character of the exalted Sovereign. It 
tended to degrade Him; to belittle Him before 
the eyes of men; to dethrone His real nobility! 
"If thou be the Son of God, command that these 
stones be made bread." "But He answered, It 
is written, Man shall not live by bread alone, but 
by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth 
of God." 

By this quotation He would remind the tempter 
of the fact, that the performing of the proposed 
miracle was a very small matter, as such. Had 
not God been performing daily, for forty years, 

12 



THE MODERN DEITY. 

a miracle, by which He had provided enough 
bread for two and a half millions of people; and 
had He not in proof of the fact that He and the 
Father were one, provided enough to feed several 
thousand people with five loaves and two small 
fishes, and gathered up twelve baskets' full of the 
fragments that remained ? The proposed miracle 
was a small matter, but what God had been doing 
for others, He refused to do for Himself, and 
scorned to do at the suggestion of the devil, and 
gives the best of reasons, when He says, "Man 
shall not live by bread alone." And even satan 
was convinced that this was true, for he was 
foiled by the Divine logic, and surely, such con- 
vincing truth is worthy of reverent and receptive 
consideration. 

There are few among us who do not like to 
be regarded as optimists, and our most dreaded 
enemy is he who calls us pessimistic. If by 
optimism we mean a culturing of ourselves to the 
adoption of that attitude which declines to see 
the dark, disagreeable and unpleasant facts of 
life; an optimism after the flabby, jelly-fish type; 
a namby-pambyism that ostrich-like buries its 
head in the sand and refuses to look squarely in 
the face of things as they are. If that is the 
optimism we covet and by which we wish to be 

13 



THE MODERN DEITY. 

known, then I must be counted out of the com- 
pany. It isn't enough, however, to look on the 
bright side — better have a look at both sides. 
And in doing so, one need not succumb to a case 
of hypochondria, nor become so blinded as to 
suppose there is more pain than pleasure; more 
tears than laughter; that the groans of earth 
far exceeds its glories, and to be so profundly 
overwhelmed by the seriousness of life that it 
must be viewed through glasses of indigo, and 

"Wear long faces, just as if our Maker, 
The Lord of goodness, were an undertaker/' 

But can there be a cowardice more dishonorable 
than that which shows in itself a disinclination 
to see and face the darker facts which cloud so 
perceptibly the otherwise brighter aspects of life? 
And is he a lesser patriot who is willing to see 
these things, and seeing them, give to them a 
voice of articulate utterance? Or, rather, is it 
not treasonable to dope the torturing evils which 
afflict humanity with the soothing-syrup of "all 
is well," and thus turning our evidence in the case 
into perjury? Not a stooping to slander; nor to 
the babbling of idiotic foolishness, no, not that, 
but when a man gets sight of prevailing and 

14 



THE MODERN DEITY. 

thriving evils that must ever burn their deep sig- 
nificance into the consciousness of every honest 
citizen, then to seal the lips and fling down the 
pen, and to contemptably count the cost in the 
ridicule and scorn of those whose mock patriot- 
ism has led them to exalt the rule of silence to 
a pedestal of honor, is treason as dark and loath- 
some as that which turned the face of Benedict 
Arnold's picture to the wall. And we exclaim 
with Scotland's poet: 

"Wha will be a traitor knave? 
Wha can fill a coward's grave?" 

And believing that the old Latin proverb rings 
true, "suppressio veri suggestio falsi," i. e., the 
suppression of the truth is the suggestion of a 
lie ; one can readily see that it is not at all nec- 
essary to peer through blue spectacles to affirm 
without prejudice, that when it comes to a propo- 
sition such as Satan propounded most men will 
be found on the devil's side, and that many who 
would unhesitatingly reject the classification, will 
stand with him in his argument that "one must 
live." And this, too, in the face of the fact, that 
men know this truth w r hich Christ here enunci- 
ated, but hate it w 7 ith a satanic hatred; it jars 

15 



THE MODERN DEITY. 

upon their false conceptions, and gives a severe 
jolt to unworthy ambition. And why? 

Because the body is everything. There is noth- 
ing of greater value than flesh and blood, and the 
wiseacres are right in reducing thought and feel- 
ing to those constituent elements. Man is but 
so many gallons of water, so many pounds of car- 
bon, with smaller quantities of phosphorus, sul- 
phur, potassium, iron and other substances, which 
you will see carefully sealed in jars on the shelves 
in the laboratory. Therefore, we are mere au- 
tomata, as science would have us believe, clock- 
work machines wound up by meat and drink. 
Bread is everything. Bread is the thing in which 
we live and move and have our being. Provision 
stores are our temples and the keepers thereof 
our priests. The bodily life is the subject of all 
bliss. Bread is the foundation. Take away bread 
and bliss departs, man dies, and there is the end 
to it. The necessary conditions for happiness 
are in the digestive organs. 

" 'Live while you live,' the epicure will say, 
'And seize the pleasures of the present day.' " 



16 



THE MODERN DEITY. 



An Idolatrous Age. 

That the times are out of tune needs scarcely 
to be said. It may be true that whenever wise 
men have taken to thinking about their times, 
they have always thought evil of them. But the 
fact of the matter is, the times have gone wrong 
before the wise men take to the business of 
thinking about them at all. We are rarely con- 
scious of our constitutions until they trouble us 
by disorder. 'Thou shalt have no other gods be- 
fore Me." Thus the decalogue opens. That deca- 
logue has never been annulled. In the presence 
of the one living and true God, let no other be 
presumed. Upon the proper recognition of that 
edict depends the happiness of individuals and 
the destiny of nations. It has always been so ; it 
is so now. But what's the use to argue the exist- 
ence of God ? True, to argue that there is a God 
is as wise as to argue that there is a sun, but the 
blind see not the sun, the blind see not God. 
Eyes have they, but they see not. Ears have 
they, but they hear not. There is a god, how- 
ever, which men do see. It needs no argument 
to prove his existence. A god so real, so omnip- 

17 



THE MODERN DEITY. 

tent, so omnipresent that it seems well nigh futile 
to attempt to argue the existence of any other. It 
is neither Venus nor Bacchus, but it is Plutus. 
There is no doubt about it. Plutus, in one or 
other of its forms, is the man-created deity, to 
which large numbers are bowing down with a 
blindness only equaled by their devotion. 

The mention of idolatry turns the thoughts of 
most men to the poor, half-naked, half-starved 
heathen with the altar of their god at the door. 
But we need not go so far afield. Let us come 
home, sit down and take a good square look at 
ourselves. Worse than that of ancient days is 
the paganism of these opening years of the twen- 
tieth century. A paganism in the throes of in- 
cessant revival. And I am bold to suggest that 
while people's eyes are too blind to perceive the 
God of Heaven, and their ears too dull to hear the 
voice of the Infinite, they are ever ready to be- 
hold the shining face of this American dollar 
which I hold before you and to listen to its me- 
tallic voice. I point to this dollar and say, "These 
be thy gods." While traveling in Europe the 
writer remarked, with what he felt a just pride, 
to a fellow passenger, that he was from the 
United States, at which the Londoner turned 
upon him with "That's where the dollar is Al- 
ls 



THE MODERN DEITY. 

mighty?" Well, whether we like it or not, and I 
confess it was not to my liking, that is how others 
see us. When South Sea Islanders are turning 
from cannibal feasts to sacraments, and heathen 
nations bending before the eternal God, all this 
is in strange contrast to the heathenism in Chris- 
tian lands where paganism seems to have its 
loudest voice, until we are having it prophesied 
that the now so-called heathen world may one 
day raise the heaven-inspired battle-cry, "The 
Western World for Christ, ,, and with Crusades 
carrying the enlightening Gospel, seek to bring 
us back to a lost faith. 



"Do not I love thee, g-od of gold? 
Inspect my soul and see. 
In dungeon deep, and dark, and cold, 
Lies conscience slain for thee." 



19 



THE MODERN DEITY. 



An American Disease. 



It is said, that America has the distinction of 
contributing a number of diseases to the long 
list of ailments that afflict the human family — 
diseases which even the Old World is largely un- 
familiar with. Appendicitis is said to be one of 
these. Up to twenty years ago it was not preva- 
lent in Europe, although occasional cases did oc- 
cur. In a lecture reported to have been delivered 
at St. Thomas' Hospital, London, William Henry 
Battle, F. R. C. S., declared his belief that the 
spread of appendicitis was due to the world-wide 
use of American foodstuffs. Let that be as it 
may, there is a moral disease that is prevalent 
in its acutest forms in America, namely, Mate- 
rialism, whose symptoms are money-madness and 
pleasure-madness. And the cause has been given 
in the intellectual and moral food upon which the 
age is made to feed. 

In an age which boasts that it can scratch the 
Lord's Prayer on one side of a ten-cent piece and 
the Ten Commandments on the other side ; when 
morals are reduced to vulgar fractions ; when the 
chief subject in the curriculum of life is that ten 

20 



THE MODERN DEITY. 

cents make a dime and ten dimes make a dollar, 
you, my reader, will agree with me in this, at 
least, that the god of materialism is better known, 
vastly more popular, and more faithfully loved 
than the God of Heaven in whose hands our very 
breath is, and who in mercy permits an age of 
such unequaled prosperity. We read what a 
journalist is reported to have asserted that "The 
last century opened with three million Americans 
who loved liberty, and closed with seventy-five 
millions who loved money," and we are exceed- 
ingly anxious to modify that statement by adding 
that it was said "sweepingly." But we need not 
pierce to any depth the crust of society in order 
to discover that there is a vast amount of truth 
in the satirical fling. 

There is no kind of atheism so prevalent and 
so formidable today as Materialism. A mate- 
rialism that, with the most insolent mien brazenly 
asserts, that prosperity is the only heaven, and 
adversity the only hell. That to "get on" is the 
acme of human happiness, and to "succeed" is 
the final goal of life. That big "I" is the one 
whose urgent claims we must heed, and the only 
tribunal to which we must render account. That 
the first personal pronoun is the base from which 
all else must be considered ; the center from which 

21 



THE MODERN DEITY. 

all must emanate; the pivot around which all 
must revolve. Let me quote from another — four 
lines which constitute the whole of a poem. It 
fits to a nicety the modern philosophy of life : 

"I, I, I, I itself I; 
The inside and outside, the what and the why ; 
The when and the where, the low and the high ; 

All I, I, I, I itself I." 

They certainly sound like a take-off on some 
hide-bound egotist, or else the babble of a comic 
poet. But they are neither. They are rather the 
motto of a pagan religion in our time, called 
"Christian Science," embodying as they do, the 
essence of the entire system. It well defines the 
source from which flows the paganism embodied 
in our theme, but swinging to quiet the other ex- . 
treme, however, in its practical development. A 
form of idolatry as dark and degrading as that 
of the most benighted heathen who bows down 
to wood and stone. Of course we will at once 
repudiate the charge, and in burning fervor ex- 
claim, "I am no idolater." But not so fast. The 
thing a man thinks most of, that is his god. 
Money is worshiped just as truly as if silver dol- 
lars were piled up before men and they prayed 

22 



THE MODERN DEITY. 

to them every day. It is not all necessary to have 
a gilded image, but the age talks more about 
money, thinks more about money, and prays more 
about money than any preceding generation in the 
world's history. Nor does it depend upon the 
size of the idol. The rich are not its only de- 
votees. In non-Christian lands, there are idols of 
mammoth dimensions, but there are also many 
that are very small, so small they might be set in 
an earring. But idols all. May it not be said in 
truth, that it is the man who has little or no 
money who most frequents the shrine? The 
idolatry of the poor man is as pagan as the one 
who has secured it by the same devotion. The 
differentiating feature being merely the size of 
the idol. One grasps dollars, the other pennies, 
but both grasp. 

"To live for self, to think of self, 
For self and none beside." 

It has crept into our universities, offering its 
tempting "foundations" to boards of trustees and 
faculties, who prostrate before those who can 
furnish endowments, and leading youth to turn 
away from the wealth of mentality as of less 
value than that of business, by which to attain 
one's bread and butter and roof. One may pick 

23 



THE MODERN DEITY. 

up the commencement addresses of many leading 
institutions of "higher" learning and find inspira- 
tion for all of life's pursuits, but with scarcely the 
slightest hint concerning man's higher interests, . 
interests which must put all other pursuits into 
eternal shade, until from the lips of one, who 
by reason of his illustrious father, sets a pace, 
and who had won honors for scholarship, we hear 
this: "That is nothing, I had much rather be 
good at baseball and football." And what shall 
we say of gifted men, men in possession of choice 
literary gifts, who might win renown, yet wasting 
them as a prodigal wastes his strength on foolish 
and worthless things. 



24 



THE MODERN DEITY. 



Present Day Materialism. 

What then, in a word, is the definition of 
Materialism? It is the deification of matter. Mat- 
ter is eternal. Matter is God. It asserts that 
there is no separate spiritual substance. That 
man is earth-born, earth-bound and earth-des- 
tined. That sin lies in the material and not in 
the will to do evil. That all things take place 
under a law, which is called the law of "neces- 
sity." That the true philosophy of life is the 
"philosophy of dirt." A noted writer puts into 
the mouth of one of his heroes the question, 
"What do you believe?" And the reply is, "I 
believe in that," stamping his foot on the ground. 
What a sorry world, when men assume that per- 
ception by the senses is the only basis of belief ; 
when man will believe only in that which is seen 
and tangible! When the realities of an inner 
world of consciousness is degraded to a level 
with the brute. A materialism continually urg- 
ing the legitimatcy of our struggle for bread and 
clothes and shelter and things, until the conflict 
to secure these obscures the ultimate reason for 
their use. And after all, wherein lies the value 

25 



THE MODERN DEITY. 

of these things, save as they make us men and 
women who live to make life for others a better, 
purer and more perfect life? Whenever any 
other motive of human progress has superseded 
that, progress has ceased, disintegration has set 
in, whether in men or nations. 

W. H. Mallock, in "The New Republic," gives 
a terrible arraignment of the blind materialism 
of our time, which he puts into the mouth of Mr. 
Herbert: "The age is now wandering in an ac- 
cursed wilderness which not only shows no hill- 
tops whence the promised land may be seen, but 
which to most of the wanderers seems a promised 
land itself. And they have a God of their own, 
too, who engages now to lead them out of it if 
they will follow him who, for visible token of 
the godhead, leads them with a pillar of cloud by 
day and a pillar of fire by night, the cloud being 
the black smoke of their factory chimneys and 
the fire the red glare of their blast furnaces. 
And so effectual are these modern divine guides 
that if we were standing on the brink of Jordan 
itself we should be utterly unable to catch, 
through the fire and the smoke, one single 
glimpse of the sunset hills beyond.'' This is a 
picture of the materialism of our day. Is it too 

26 



THE MODERN DEITY. 

vivid? What is it but the absorption of men in 
material pursuits that is the cause of such wide- 
spread disregard and neglect of the obligations 
we have to Almighty God. So deeply are men 
immersed in the getting and the having end of 
life that there is no other interest which gives 
them concern. The Hindus have a festival at 
which they pay divine honors to the implements 
of their trades. The blacksmith brings his ham- 
mer, the carpenter his saw, the farmer his plow ; 
and they bow down and worship them. We have 
a revival of that paganism here in America in the 
absorbing devotion of life's pursuits; the mort- 
gaging of every energy to the getting of a live- 
lihood to the neglect of our real life. A form of 
idolatry so base, so terrible in its power, so cruel 
to its victims, so cancer-like in its consumption of 
the soul's capacity for happiness, and so sure and 
speedy is the Nemesis that pursues indulgence 
therein, that anyone with his eye upon the drifts 
of the times could well say in the words of Ham- 
let: 

"* * * But that I am forbid 
To tell the secrets of this prison-house, 
I could a tale unfold, whose lightest word 
Would harrow up your soul." 

27 



THE MODERN DEITY. 

We may deny all this in our sober thought and 
seek to refute these tenets of our materialistic 
times, but that in no way explodes the fact, that 
such is the living creed of the masses. We may 
say that we believe in an all-intelligent, all-wise 
and an all-loving God, inscribe it on our coin 
and sing it in our anthem, yet the mass of men 
are living as if there were no such God at all. 

We see this in its practical development in sev- 
eral ways : 



28 



THE MODERN DEITY. 



The Craze of Commerce. 

The ideal man is the one who turns everything 
into gold ; the man who gets and holds and then 
goes on to get more and hold more. Agassiz' 
wise reply to the lecture bureau — "I have no time 
to make money" — sounds like a bit of insanity. 
Gordon's refusal to accept reward from the Chi- 
nese Emperor for his services in the Tai Ping 
rebellion, and who on his arrival in England, de- 
clined every honor, preferring to bury himself 
in obscurity, and the very medals that were show- 
ered upon him he put no value upon, and would 
even have them melted down to provide relief to 
the poor, sounds like a piece of Quixotism. Lu- 
ther's refusal to accept a considerable sum of 
money sent to him, and when he prayed that 
night, "Lord, Thou must not think to put me off 
with a portion like that; I want Thyself," seems 
nothing short of foolishness. "The simple life" 
as lived by Thoreau in the wilderness, and as 
pictured by Wagner, appears to us only an idyllic 
dream. The suggestion of Paul, "Having food 
and raiment we have enough," is ridiculed as 
antiquated. Our feeling today scorns all such 



THE MODERN DEITY. 

moderation. To make a living is not enough ; to 
secure comfort for self and family is considered 
an exceedingly small thing ; but to toil and strug- 
gle for dazzling prizes — the success that glitters 
— that is the one thing. It is said that a minister 
walking on the street of a certain city overheard 
the talk of some university students. Looking 
upon the gleaming equipages and splendid silks 
flitting by, one said : k T tell you, boys, it is money 
that goes in this town." And the belief that it is 
money that goes is the evidence of a well nigh 
universal sentiment. The services of man with- 
out an itch for reward, the quiet, unostentatious 
sacrifice of personal gain or personal interest for 
the good of others, these have all but died out, 
and if not altogether passed away, are repudiated 
as sheer folly. The mad race of the ignoble 
crowd for wealth draws like the suction of a 
maelstrom, or entices like the song of the siren, 
until dazed and dizzied by the fierce momentum, 
men forget all else and are transformed into mere 
money-makers, offering this achievement to the 
soul as the standard of life. 

The Saturday Evening Post tells the story of 
the president of the Yellowstone Park Associa- 
tion, who traveled in Europe, having for a com- 
panion a man interested in the hotel business. 

30 



THE MODERN DEITY. 

After they had traveled over Europe, investigat- 
ing hotel and commissary problems, they finally 
arrived in Rome. They went to St. Peter's and 
stood beneath the dome. "Well," said the park 
president, "here it is; here's the dome.'' The ho- 
tel man took a look upward. Then turning to 
the speaker, said, "How much did that man in 
London say he wanted for them hams?" "Them 
hams" had blinded him to the awe-inspiring won- 
ders of the cathedral, annihilating everything else. 
And this subordinating man to his material in- 
terests, sinks his life in them, foregoes mental 
culture, moral elevation, spiritual activity and all 
that goes to make a complete manhood ; quenches 
all lofty aspirations, gets, gathers and holds all 
things, enthrones himself on and among them, 
lets every faculty be so concentrated so that the 
faculty for getting and getting-on grows strong- 
est. This, this is the godless commercialism we 
find measuring success by the standard of the 
market-place ; the sinking of other and worthier 
aims in the eager rush for gain. It makes syno- 
nymous terms of dollars and dominion. Wisdom 
is exchanged for wealth, loyalty for loot and 
God for gain. Homes are exchanged for harems, 
daughters for dirt and purity for position. Love, 

31 



THE MODERN DEITY. 

patriotism and honesty, the triple graces which 
make a nation strong, have their prices fixed. 

"Oh, cursed love of gold; when for thy sake 
The fool throws up his interest in both worlds ; 
First starved in this, then damn'd in that to 

come." 



32 



THE MODERN DEITY. 



The Controlling Principle. 

When Pope Pius IV. heard of the death of 
John Calvin he declared that that "heretic's" 
strength lay in this, that money never had the 
slightest charm for him. If therein lay Calvin's 
strength, surely the spell which money throws 
over a man shows his weakness. Ruskin said: 
"Money-making is an all-absorbing game, and we 
knock each other down oftener in playing at that 
than at football or any rougher sport." "Busi- 
ness is business" is the controlling motto under 
this blind despotism. Editors will publish not 
what the people essentially need, but want. If 
the readers want the editorial page abbreviated 
or cut out and the sporting pages increased, then 
"business is business," and presto, it is done. 
Under the dominion of the dollar the world is 
filled with books that "sell" and not especially 
with books that elevate. To please if not to 
amuse a flippant public, writers trim their sails 
to catch the breeze of popular favor. Five novels 
of various complexions are born into the world 
each day, according to somebody's reckoning. 
One of our foremost writers has told how his 

33 



THE MODERN DEITY. 

more serious books on vital topics brought him 
little or no return, whereas for his little effort 
in turning out novels and magazine articles of 
a light and airy nature, he secured the greatest 
recognition and profit. And to accept coronation 
at the hands of the fickle public, rather than a 
conscience void of offense, is the temptation 
which few writers can resist; for the public 
wants nothing so much as to be amused. The 
cheapest doggerel must crush out the finest heart- 
hymns, and "Home, Sweet Home/' ''Jesus, Lover 
of My Soul," and the like, have their melody 
strangled with "ragtime/' the thinnest skim-milk 
which today wears the dignity of music, till mu- 
sic walks with shamed face in a land where 
patriots were made, largely because they were 
thrilled with the lofty songs of the church and 
fireside. Indeed, it has tainted the very centers 
of citizenship. A Canadian judge in the court of 
general sessions recently created a sensation by 
refusing applications for naturalization papers. 
"Many of these people/' said the judge, "come 
here and ask for naturalization papers, though 
they never intend to become citizens. They sim- 
ply use the certificates for commercial purposes. 

34 



THE MODERN DEITY. 

A man to whom we granted such papers some- 
time ago, came to the clerk and asked for another 
certificate, because the one we gave him was 
worn out. No doubt he had loaned it to others 
for a like use, at so many dollars. The clerk was 
not even sure it was the same man to whom the 
certificate had originally been granted." And we 
are tempted to cry out that "man's chief end is 
to glorify gold and to enjoy it forever." 

But more, the passion for pelf hesitates not to 
leap to the very summit of its avariciousness, 
and demands that which is more precious than 
life, for fuel to feed its ever glowing fire, until 
trafficking in white slavery is not only no longer 
a concealed fact in so far as it concerns those 
directly involved, but is open and wholesale under 
the finest names of legitimate business. There 
must be a hell deep and dark for the buyers and 
sellers in the trade, but is there no such place for 
the consciousless corporation, w r hich pays a girl 
the starvation wage of $3.50 per week, and who 
must sell out her virtue (not from choice but 
necessity) in order to live? Which will you say 
is the guiltier — the brute who buys the product on 
the street, or the heartless demons who have man- 
ufactured it by their greed ? 

35 



THE MODERN DEITY. 

"Gold! Gold! Gold! Gold! 
Bright and yellow, hard and cold, 
Molten, graven, hammered and rolled; 
Heavy to get and light to hold; 
Hoarded, bartered, bought and sold, 
Stolen, borrowed, squandered, doled; 
Spurned by the young, but hugged by the old 
To the very verge of the churchyard mold; 
Price of many a crime untold ; 
Gold! gold! gold! gold! 
Good or bad a thousandfold; 

How widely its agencies vary — 
To save — to ruin — to curse — to bless — 
As even its minted coins express 
Now stamped with the image of good Queen 
Bess, 

And now of a Bloody Mary." 

"What is he worth?" we ask concerning the 
rich man, when we should inquire "What did it 
cost him?" Prosperity may be poverty, or, as 
Ruskin put it, "Wealth may be illth." Conceive 
of a harp selling its strings to buy music ; parting 
with them one by one, beginning with the bass, 
until at last it finds its power to make music 
wholly gone. In a similar way men are bartering 
soul wealth for body gain, pawning the jewels of 

36 



THE MODERN DEITY. 

their immortality for the treasures of time, only 
to discover in the end that a rich soul is always 
rich and all are poor beside. 

The current phrases of our day are fearful wit- 
nesses of its rank atheism : e. g., "My company 
will be the loser by $25,000 if this fanatical 
scheme goes through." "Fools will be fools, 
anyway, and we might just as well profit by their 
foolishness as some other concern." "One man's 
money is as good as another's, and who cares how 
he drops it so long as it reaches our till in the 
end." "What the people want they will get, and 
we might as well have their trade as another/' 
"We all love the teachings of the Master, but 
this is a business proposition pure and simple," 
and so on ad infinitum. Up to the neck in bills 
and accounts and invoices and orders, they have 
not a corner in their heart, or of their time, for 
matters religious. The stock market is more im- 
portant. "Money stringent." "Wheat weaker." 
"Cotton steady." "Steel depressed." "Flour; 
buyers more free," and so forth. This is a speci- 
men of the language of commerce, which tells 
how intently men are on the mad race for earthly 
things. 

And how surprising to hear men, of whom 
better might be expected, conniving at dishonor- 

S7 



THE MODERN DEITY. 

able practices or petty frauds, on the grounds 
that they are necessary, or universal. "You must 
just wink at a good deal at what you cannot 
approve." "It is impossible to get on in this 
city if you are too strait-laced." And so, con- 
science, like a drugged watch-dog, makes but 
feeble remonstrance. What a condescension to 
such a standard of morality ! If this be the ac- 
cepted commercial custom, rendered necessary, 
and hence innocent by its universality, then sin 
needs only to be widespread to transform it into 
a virtue. Arthur Clough has put it in his "Latest 
Decalog" : 

"Thou shalt have one God only; who 
Would be at the expense of two? 
No graven image may be 
Worshiped save in the currency. 
Swear not at all, since for thy curse 
Thine enemy is none the worse. 
At church on Sunday to attend 
Will serve to keep the world thy friend. 
Honor thy parents; that is all 
By whom advancement may befall. 
Thou shalt not kill, but needst not strive 
Officiously to keep alive. 
Adultery is not fit 

38 



THE MODERN DEITY. 

Or safe for woman to commit. 
Thou shalt not steal; an empty feat 
When 'tis more lucrative to cheat. 
Bear not false witness ; let the lie 
Have time on its own wings to fly. 
Thou shalt not covet; but tradition 
Approves all forms of competition. " 

The man who puts gold above God, chattels 
above character, and mammon above manhood, 
has inverted God's order and is surely and swift- 
ly paving his downward way. He was not far 
wrong who said: "The only crosses some people 
bear are gold ones." And when we are told that 
in a certain manufacturing city in England bronze 
idols are made in thousands for the Hindoos, by 
men who every Sunday pray for their conversion, 
we are tempted to believe that the poet struck 
a keynote in saying 'tradition approves all forms 
of competition,' and reveals the baseness to which 
a godless commercialism reduces men ; a baseness 
which is kin to martyrdom — a martyrdom of con- 
science and the first principles of integrity. In 
the times of the Romish Inquisition there was a 
horrible form of punishment for heretics, called 
"The Virgin's Kiss." The victim w r as pushed 
forward to kiss an image of the Virgin, when, lo, 

39 



THE MODERN DEITY. 

its arms immediately enclosed him in a deadly 
embrace, piercing his body with a hundred hid- 
den spikes. Many a man has found personal 
gratification to be like that beautiful and seeming- 
ly harmless figure. And yielding to its solicitation 
is only to be "pierced through with many sor- 
rows/' Or like the little boy who for months 
had been gathering up prune-stones, being fond 
of the kernel, and wishing to prepare for him- 
self a great treat, laid up a considerable store. 
At last came the day of anticipated enjoyment; 
he ate them all, and after hours of intense agony, 
died. And men who have concentrated all their 
energies upon amassing money, preparing a verit- 
able banquet of enjoyment for the evening- time 
of life, have sat down to the sumptuously pre- 
pared feast, when, lo, death sits at the table, too. 
Or like the Italian nobleman who took this ter- 
rible revenge on one whom he hated. He set him 
alive in a niche in the palace he was building 
and piled row upon row of bricks and stones 
about him, until the wall closed over him, and 
shut him in his dark and awful tomb. We shrink 
in horror at such a tale, but it is a symbol of 
what many men are constantly doing with their 
better selves — piling brick and stones about them, 
walling them in and leaving them there to die — 

40 



THE MODERN DEITY. 

only the material is called by a different name. 
Many have buried their manhood in their busi- 
ness. In the inner chamber of many an other- 
wise beautiful life, hidden away from sight, is 
the grave of a human soul, a grave dug with a 
spade called greed. Hidden in many a beautiful 
garden of flowers is the sepulcher in which honor, 
purity, truth and virtue lie buried. 

"It is not the fact that you're dead that counts, 
It's only, HOW DID YOU DIE?" 

One of the memorable places of interest to 
the tourist is Abbotsford. Beautiful for situa- 
tion is that splendid pile overlooking the River 
Tweed with the Eildon Hills beyond. But one 
cannot ramble among the haunts of the poet with- 
out recalling a singular pathos connected with it. 
Sir Walter Scott, deceived by the architect's 
plans, was virtually ruined in building it. The 
counting of the cost was but to discover himself 
a hopeless debtor for a hundred thousand pounds. 
But listen to him: "What shall I do?" he said. 
"By God's grace, though I die penniless, I will 
cancel my obligations." And he did. In the 
terms of the money market, we say that a for- 
tune makes a man, and that the loss of a fortune 

41 



THE MODERN DEITY. 

ruins him. What a miserable, petty and sordid 
standard of measurement! A fortune cannot 
make a man, nor can its loss prove his ruin. 

"It's no in titles nor in rank, 
It's no in wealth in Lun'on Bank 
To purchase peace and rest; 
It's no in makin' muchle mair, 
It's no in books, it's no in lear, 
To mak' us truly blest." 

And when we consider the fountain-head 
whence streams the turbulent currents of jeal- 
ousy and strife between nations, we shall find it 
in the fact that they are weighed simply as com- 
mercial assets. Not humanitarianism ; not the 
desire to uplift the peoples have taken the powers 
of America and Europe into Asia and Africa — 
these are merely "by-products" of commerce. 
No, not these. But trade, pure and simple. Our 
prophetic eye, relative to the destiny of nations, 
sees their rise or fall through our commercial 
telescope which sweeps the horizon of their ma- 
terial needs, and the quantity of goods they buy 
or refuse to buy from us, decides their fate. 



42 



THE MODERN DEITY. 



The Discoveries of Science. 

In this we have surpassed every other pre- 
ceding age. Hidden mysteries have been brought 
to light. Forces hitherto unknown have yielded 
to our touch, until men are virtually drunk with 
its scientific triumphs. In order to illustrate the 
tremendous speed with which we move, we com- 
pare the snail-pace of the ox-cart with the flash 
of lightning. The world moves with an ever- 
increasing velocity. The machinery of life is so 
highly geared, and the momentum of things so 
intense, that, as Mr. Roosevelt has said, "it may 
break down." When the express train is clipping 
oflf the sixty or seventy odd miles an hour, look 
out for the axle ! As one has observed, "Today 
a man can live the 969 years of Methuselah's life 
in ten years." But there may be more of the 
bane than the blessing in such a comparison. Did 
not the civilizations that flourished along the 
Mediterranean ages ago have much that might 
profitably be compared with our modern life, 
and we know that their wide material conquests, 
their mastery of mechanical appliances, their 
wealth and luxury, were but the sirenic prelude 

43 



THE MODERN DEITY. 

of their downfall. Marvelous material triumphs 
are no immunity to disaster. Like those ages, 
only to an alarmingly increased degree, we are 
less concerned with the manufacture of manhood 
than the conquest of nature. Girdling contin- 
ents, compassing seas, conquering the air, and 
laying all things tributary to man's temporal grat- 
ification — in which there is much reason to re- 
joice — yet what a price to pay, when triumphant 
science lies down upon its own achievements to 
worship the creation rather than its Creator! 
And forgetful of the fact that 

"Back of the loaf is the snowy flour, 
And back of the flour, the mill; 
And back of the mill are the wheat and the shower, 
And the sun and the Father's will." 

When we see the scientist measuring the dis- 
tance of the stars ; weighing the sun as in a bal- 
ance ; analyzing the chemical elements of remote 
orbs; predicting to a second the eclipses of the 
heavenly bodies; photographing far-off worlds, 
and reporting the results of his researches to a 
brother philosopher across the seas by means of 
a single wire, indeed, without even a wire, we 
stand back in dumb wonder before the achieve- 
ments of the human mind, and ready to exclaim : 

44 



THE MODERN DEITY. 

"Man! 
Thou pendulum 'twixt Deity and dust." 

But has the age much to be really thankful 
for even in the face of all its marvels? It is 
true that all conditions of life are ameliorated, 
mind is daily pursuing farther its conquests over 
matter; and it is undoubtedly true that, other 
things being equal, the generation that travels 
sixty or seventy miles an hour is five or six times 
as civilized as the generation that travels only 
ten or twelve. But the fact is, the other things 
are not equal. Can we honestly say that an age 
which holds it a greater achievement to identify 
men with monkeys than to separate right from 
wrong; that the beneficent discoveries that saves 
us from an hour's illness, but in turn gives us 
a lifetime of heart-sickness; that all that is 
really sacred in the life of man have been ban- 
ished or buried by the very things which we 
boast of as our civilization; can we say that we 
have really advanced, in the proper meaning of 
that term, as much as we like to boast? 

I am quite well aware of the fact that some 
will accuse me of doing society an injustice, and 
will point to the enlightened interest that is every- 
where on the spread, the light of intellectual and 

45 



THE MODERN DEITY. 

scientific research that is gilding with its effulgent 
rays all the avenues of modern thought ; that the 
era of a freer, truer and ever-widening and 
grander view of things, is dawning o'er the 
world. But will these fashionable opinions bear 
the acid test of fact? We admit that, as a rule, 
the age is vastly better informed, that it has 
fewer prejudices and infinitely more knowledge 
than a hundred years ago. But why look merely 
at the knowledge itself ? We should measure the 
effects of knowledge. Knowledge puts speech on 
the tongue of the parrot, but we do not trust our 
children to his scholastic training. As a reposi- 
tory of facts our age stands, unquestionably, the 
highest. But you cannot test the health of a 
generation by looking over its examination papers 
in physical science. Nor can you measure the 
value of its acquisition of knowledge by looking 
over its copy-book. What are we doing with it? 
That is the vital question. What of it, if the 
goal be simply what Huxley said : "To reclaim a 
little more land, to add something to the extent 
of our possession." 



46 



THE MODERN DEITY. 



The Progress of Civilization. 

In a physical sense, is mankind developing a 
better type, a stronger and healthier race? In- 
tellectually, have we a higher standard of intel- 
ligence and a more creative capacity than the 
generations past ? Morally and spiritually, is the 
race on the ascendency? It is wise to ask these 
questions, for we must concede that they are 
vital. The triumphant tread of material progress 
has trampled all other things beneath it or driven 
all things before it, so much so, that it would 
seem to have reached the ultimate limit of ad- 
vancement, and our material comforts have been 
so multiplied that we are tempted to think that 
we are in the dawn of the long-expected Golden 
Age. But has this fashionable conception, this 
conquest of material things tended to that higher 
and truer test of progress, the moral and spir- 
itual elevation of the race? If we are insistent 
upon an affirmative reply, it must be in the most 
superficial sense, for the facts of history are all 
against it, and you will fail to find any evidence 
that the material development of the ages has 

47 



THE MODERN DEITY. 

fed or fostered either the physical, mental or 
spiritual development of men. 

We still retain in memory the nursery legends 
of the giants of olden time. Men of such mam- 
moth proportions who could cross a river at a 
single stride, and step from mountain-top to 
mountain-top with the utmost ease. A French 
writer, an academician by the name of M. Hen- 
rion, writing upon the subject many years ago, 
said that the human stature between the begin- 
ning of the race to the time of Christ, had 
deteriorated. He maintained that Adam was 124 
feet in height, and that Eve was but slightly 
shorter. A rapid degeneration set in and the hu- 
man stature continued to shrink till Noah reached 
only 27 feet, Abraham 20 feet, and Moses 
13 feet, the process continuing down to 
the Christian era, when it was arrested at a 
standard of a little under six feet, which 
standard has been maintained to the present day. 
Well, we have grown older, and we trust wiser, 
and have laid aside these old-time though fas- 
cinating tales and refuse to believe that, with 
some exceptions, the human beings then were 
much bigger than we are now. Science and 
archaeology were wont to confirm the views of 
those ancient legends when fossilized bones were 

48 



THE MODERN DEITY. 

unearthed, which made even the giants men- 
tioned in history but dwarfs and pigmies. But 
the rapid advance of science in modern times 
easily dissipated these dream-like notions, and 
one but needs to look at the Egyptian mummies, 
the sculptured figures, the stone coffins and the 
wooden caskets in the British Museum to con- 
clude that the human stature was not, to any 
marked degree, materially different in size from 
that of our own age. True, the spies sent into 
Canaan returned with the report that in com- 
parison with the men they saw there, the Is- 
raelites were but grasshoppers. But Caleb and 
Joshua did not so describe them, and I am 
willing to accept the testimony of courage, 
though it be in the minority, than that of cow- 
ardice, though it be in the majority. 

But supposing that we have maintained in phy- 
sical size the traditions of the race, that in no 
way goes to prove that we are developing a bet- 
ter, a stronger and a healthier people. Under or- 
dinary conditions a man of gigantic stature pos- 
sesses no more vitality than one of a much 
smaller size. Avoirdupois is not the test of 
health. A strong physique cannot be measured 
by its bulk than the worth of a book by its thick- 
ness. Therefore the health and strength of a 

49 



THE MODERN DEITY. 

race is not weighed by quantity, but by quality. 
If we accept this theory, and it is both logical 
and reasonable on its very face, then we must, 
if facts are worth anything at all, conclude that, 
as a race, we are deteriorating with an alarming 
rapidity. When the United States called for 
volunteers in 1861, to uphold the Union in the 
War of the Rebellion, 12 per cent of the appli- 
cants for enlistment were rejected, failing to pass 
the physical examination. Thirty-seven years 
later, when in 1898 the call was made for men 
in the liberation of Cuba in the war with Spain, 
58 l-10ths per cent of the applicants were re- 
jected as physically unfit. We may argue this 
upon the theory that the standard of physical 
excellence during the latter period was higher 
than that of '61, but let it be so, the percentage 
of young men who are physically degenerating 
is a frightful commentary on the deterioration 
of the race, and requires no further proof. 

That the fuller blaze of twenty centuries of 
enlightenment has no doubt quickened intellec- 
tual activity, is easily seen in the making of 
many books, the founding of libraries, and the in- 
creased desire for liberal learning. But this is 
only a surface estimate at best. With all the 
accumulation of intellectual privileges, it must 

50 



THE MODERN DEITY. 

be noted by every unprejudiced student of his- 
tory, that the ancients far excelled us in the cre- 
ative faculty. The poetic genius of the early 
Hebrews and Greeks we have by no means even 
paralleled. Nor do we begin to match the cre- 
ative power of the sculpture of that period. And 
as for Aristotle's, Demosthenes', Cicero's, Dan- 
te's, Plato's and Shakespeare's, all our modern 
progress in mental equipment does not give birth 
to their duplicates. 

If this be true of the creative faculty of the 
intellect, it is still more evident that the progress 
of material civilization has not been conducive 
to the production of moral and spiritual giant- 
hood. And 

"Unless above himself he can 
Erect himself, how poor a thing" is man!" 

Indeed, may it not be said, that the material 
has militated against the moral and spiritual, just 
as the good is constantly the enemy of the best? 
And when w r e consider that the good was in- 
tended to be the servant of the best, we need 
not think at all deeply to discover the cause of 
failure. Where are the Joshuas who would stay 
sun and moon to do battle against the enemies 
of God? The Nehemiahs who refuse to side- 
step their mission of reconstruction and go down 
to the rabble on the plains of Ono? The Lu- 

51 



THE MODERN DEITY. 

tliers- who will hurl ink-bottles, or anything else 
for that matter, at real devils ? The John Knoxs 
who will preach righteousness though it offend 
royalty, and whose prayers are mightier than 
armies ? We are not growing to any perceptible 
degree such spiritual athletes. To dismiss the 
question upon the time-worn theory that their 
times called for such men, will in no satisfac- 
tory way account for their existence. If there 
ever was a time when the need for such a type 
of gianthood to asail existing evils and to set 
up a true standard of manhood, that time was 
no more then than now. 



"God give us men. A time like this demands 
Strong- minds, great hearts, true faith and ready 

hands. 
Men whom the lust of office does not kill; 
Men whom the spoils of office cannot buy; 
Men who have honor, men who will not lie. 
Men who can stand before a demagogue 
And damn his treacherous flatteries without wink- 
ing:; 
Tall men, sun crowned, who live above the fog-, 
In public duty and in private thinking". 
For while the rabble, with their thumb worn 

creeds, 
Their large profession, and their little deeds, 
Mingle in selfish strife, lo, Freedom weeps, 
Wrong" rules the land, and waiting Justice sleeps." 



52 



THE MODERN DEITY. 



Matrimonial Commercialism. 

That the sacred precinct of the home has not 
been spared the foul touch of our modern ma- 
terialism, is the conviction of unprejudiced minds. 
To such gigantic proportions has this grown that 
we have become the laughing stock of neighbor- 
ing nations. Abigail the beautiful, was not the 
last woman who has wedded a Nabal the abomin- 
able, for his fabulous wealth, and who was will- 
ing to risk everything that she might be a rich 
man's wife. Such marriages are little short of 
massacres ; such weddings are more like funerals 
where cupid is led forth fascinated by the bigness 
of the dollar mark, at which, instead of Mendel- 
ssohn's Wedding March, the Dead March of Saul 
would be more appropriate. Two immortal lives 
are united that two farms may be joined, or two 
fortunes merged. And to find a name for the 
union it is called "a love match," when in truth 
they are neither heartmates nor helpmates. Such 
alliances have no right to the sacred name of 
matrimony. Reminding us of the girl, who 
was exceedingly proud of herself because she had 

53 



THE MODERN DEITY. 

composed a piece of poetry; and when asked to 
repeat it, she gave it thus: 

"I wish I was married, 
And very well too; 
With plenty of money 
And nothing 1 to do." 

Or like the daughter of the Scotch elder who, in 
reply to her father's remark "It is a solemn thing 
to get married, lassie," said "Yes, father, but it 
is a more solemner thing not to get married at 
all." 

It would be ludicrous were it not so sad. And 
while it is true, that our women of the civilized 
world are not in the market for sale, it would be 
hard to prove to the poor slaves on the auction 
blocks of Africa, when there is so much evidence 
to the contrary. The list of foreign titles that 
have been bought with American gold, and the 
bartering of our heiresses for foreign puppets, is 
a long and sad one. Titles that are as worthless 
as a cracked nut without the kernel, a very extra- 
vagant form of "foreign exchange" in the sphere 
of economics, but a form of unholy commercial- 
ism as base as the most abject slavery; a selling 
of our girls for the paltry price of a name, until 
we are constrained to exclaim, "O Matrimony, 

54 



THE MODERN DEITY. 

what crimes are committed in thy holy name V s It 
goes without saying, that the angel of love more 
frequently abides in the cottage than in the palace, 
simply because love is not conditioned by the 
dimensions of a dwelling, nor by the standard of 
gold. These have never swayed the heart's affec- 
tions, it demands a price far higher than that, a 
price that mere things cannot buy. And a heart 
subjected to a moneyed-monster, knows a bitter- 
ness that is incomparable to any sorrow however 
intense, and only when too late, discovers that it 
was too dear at any price. 

When Jenny Lind was at the height of her 
career and fame, she suddenly left the stage for- 
ever. No explanation was given. The public 
was left in amaze and wonder. Her income had 
been enormous, her triumphs the most complete ; 
yet she left it all. Years after, on the shore of 
the sea, a friend found her late in the afternoon, 
sitting with a Bible in her lap, looking out into 
the glory of the sunset. The old question came 
up of her retirement from the stage in the full 
blaze of her glory. The singer made this reply: 
"I retired because every day on the stage made 
me think less of this, (laying her hand on the 
Bible in her lap) and nothing at all of that," 

55 



THE MODERN DEITY. 

(pointing to the sunset). What wisdom there is 
in a conviction like that! 

So Wordsworth felt when he lamented, 

"The world is too much with us; late and soon 
Getting- and spending-, we lay waste our powers." 

Whatever is destroying our eternal treasures 
ought to be given up. Whatever produces a hard- 
ening process should be done away with. What- 
ever obscures the vision to things that are of 
eternal moment should be removed. Dollars and 
name will never compensate for the loss of char- 
acter, and the loss of God. And shall our young 
women be so enchanted with gold that will, at 
the very most, but buy life's trinkets, and cry, "I 
am ready to marry him, to accept his leprous 
touch if only I may have his money!" And 
there's the bargain; a bargain of vows compar- 
able only to a Judas kissing the Christ, and as 
out of place as Satan w T ould be in heaven. 

Not only in the higher society, but also in the 
humbler walks of life we may add, that a money 
consideration enters into a large proportion of 
the marriage contract. W. D. Howells depicts 
the struggles of a woman, who is suddenly left 
penniless. She sets bravely to work for her self- 

56 



THE MODERN DEITY. 

support. She begins by decorating pottery, but 
her art is so crude that it fails to bring sufficient 
returns for her needs. Then to the coloring of 
photographs, then writing for magazines, then 
millinery, but always with the same disheartening 
results. She is capable of doing many things, but 
not capable of doing anything well enough to 
earn a livelihood, until she tries the humble task 
of making cheap bonnets for servant girls, and 
by this she succeeds to eke out a bare existence, 
till the novelist out of sheer pity, as the only way 
of extricating her from her trying situation is 
compelled to marry her off. There are doubtless 
a great many of such "heroines," young women 
who can make an impression better than they can 
make a loaf of bread; vastly more concerned 
about what goes on the head that in it, and whose 
only salvation is to be loaded upon some one who 
can support her. To be compelled to marry, or 
to cause her parents a sigh of relief when some 
merciful young man takes the burden off their 
hands. To marry just for the sake of conven- 
ience, is the most humiliating stoop any woman 
can make — such a marriage is mockery. 

But bliss is more frequently quaffed from a 
granite dipper than from a golden chalise, for 
love is heaven-born, not made-made. And the 

57 



THE MODERN DEITY. 

poor young man with nothing more than health 
and character and love, who has married the girl 
whose hands are hardened with toil in the home, 
the office or the store, has surprised the foolish 
world, when the things have failed with gold to 
buy one hour of his heaven-born bliss. When 
the money consideration is pre-eminent it is the 
death-dealing blow to happiness. That is one 
reason why the pitiless storms of evil that have 
arisen pelting in awful fury against the home, 
have caused alarm. It is not when death crosses 
the door-step that tragedy enters, but when truth, 
and honor, happiness and love are mortgaged 
for the sake of material gain. Then the costliest 
wardrobe cannot hide the ghastly skeleton that 
sits grinning through all the plate and veneer of 
material show. It is doomed, and the grave-dig- 
ger stands ready with the spade. 

"The night has a thousand eyes, and the day but one, 
But the light of the whole world dies with setting 
sun ; 
The mind has a thousand eyes and the heart but one, 

But the light of the whole life dies when love is done." 



5S 



THE MODERN DEITY. 



Commercial Patriotism. 

We cannot close our eyes to the fact, that in 
many quarters, devotion to country is measured 
by money power. Patriotic ideals are obscured 
by the black clouds of a materialistic philosophy. 
If one wishes to ascertain how positively empty 
the proud boast of patriotism is in many a reputed 
citizen, it is only necessary to present a proposi- 
tion in which the dollar is concerned. It is said 
that France uses this as the means by which a 
man's fitness for army service is tested. In many 
cases when men are summoned to enlist, they are 
attacked by diseases of an astonishingly sudden 
development. Dumbness and deafness being the 
prevailing afflictions. Appearing before the ex- 
amining board as a possible recruit, the deaf man 
positively declares through signs that he can hear 
nothing, not even the loudest crash of thunder. 
He is then discharged as unfit, but on leaving the 
room, an officer follows and drops a gold coin 
on the pavement behind him; attracted by the 
magic ring of the coin, he turns to pick it up and 
is instantly arrested and forced into the service. 
This is, ttjpugh unofficial, the test of patriotism 

59 



THE MODERN DEITY. 

in America. Prominent illustrations of it have 
been before the public eye in recent times. When 
a beneficent and long-looked- for measure appears 
in Congress, which in any way threatens to re- 
duce individual dividends, the coin's ring is heard 
above the call of patriotism. The fact that it 
will increase the general prosperity matters not; 
if it is to cut off individual income, then quickly, 
indeed, the most vigorous protest is made, and 
love of country goes w T histling down the wind 
and blown into oblivion. 

Two of the most far-reaching, vital, patriotic 
and universally beneficent measures ever pro- 
posed, measures long-hoped-for, were those 
which sought to secure reciprocity with Canada 
and the United States and for an unlimited arbi- 
rtation treaty between Great Britain and the 
United States. Measures having for their motive 
the material well-being of the nations concerned, 
but primarily the putting of all of them upon a 
basis of brotherhood. While the reciprocity bill 
passed Congress, it was defeated by the Canadian 
people. And if we are seeking the reason for its 
defeat, we shall find it, not that its passage would 
stagnate the natural resources; nor in the fear- 
fulness of annexation with the United States. 
No, not in these, primarily. But in this : (and let 

60 



THE MODERN DEITY. 

us give honor to whom honor is due) Canada's 
good sense vetoed the proposition on the ground 
that she was unprepared to ally herself to the 
disturbed, restless and uncertain American busi- 
ness methods. Both of these bills, however, 
were vigorously opposed by certain American 
Senators and leading citizens who have been loud 
in their expressions of patriotism. Why, we ask? 
This : the measures stepped upon the toes of per- 
sonal interest. They would decrease the personal 
profit of a few rich men. They would militate 
against the pocketbook of some rich pulp growers. 
Away with the people's welfare ; away with the 
idea of universal peace ; what are these considera- 
tions compared with the dollar to men who have 
become mere covetous machines ! The men who 
defeat the will of the people and disregard their 
rights in legislative halls, are the arch rebels, the 
traitors of to-day, and shall we permit the com- 
pass of our good "ship of state" to be so affected 
by the proximity of gold as to render it good for 
nothing? What care we what party badge the 
political brigand may wear, patriotic devotion 
demands that he be opposed and deposed, that 
the people, whether poor or rich, shall be heard, 
and that the interests of the whole people shall 

61 



THE MODERN DEITY. 

be the motive governing our representatives. And 
we shout in Tennyson's vigorous lines : 

"Oh for a man with heart, head, and hand, 
Like some of the simple great ones gone 

For ever and ever by; 
One still strong" man in a blatant land, 
Whatever they call him, what care I, 
Aristocrat, democrat, autocrat, one 

Who can rule, and dare not lie." 

I have read of an old farmer in the State of 
Maine who sent a son into the Civil War. He 
was killed in battle. The old man afterwards ex- 
pressed his regrets. He said that he had made a 
great mistake, that he should have had a substi- 
tute. He said that he could not get a man any- 
where in the country to do as much ivork on 
the farm as that boy, and that he was the small- 
est eater he ever saw. And in some such 
degree patriotic ideals are perishing under the 
dominion of personal gain. What a vivid picture 
historians have depicted in the marvelous com- 
mercial elevation and pinnacle-like position of 
nations past; (of men as well as nations,) who 
from the very weight of material accumulation 
toppled over, unable to maintain that balance es- 
sential to perpetuity. What a rebuke in those 
words of Macaulay, when a delegation presented 

62 



THE MODERN DEITY. 

to him a proposition which he could not approve, 
"Gentlemen," he said, "it is not at all essential 
that I go to Parliament, but it is absolutely essen- 
tial that I maintain my self-respect," But we are 
insistent upon reversing that dictum. The ends in 
immediate view are everything, and self-respect 
is thrown upon the altar and sacrificed for a base 
self-interest. It needs another element besides 
genius, talent or power to rightly guide a people 
to its highest and most beneficent goal. It calls 
for men whose large-heartedness stands out con- 
spiciously in all the splendid light of self-eface- 
ment against the black background of modern 
greed. For such a manifestation there is earnest 
expectation, yes, for this "the whole creation 
groaneth and travaileth in pain together until 
now." 



"Were I so tall to reach the pole, 
Or grasp the ocean with my span, 
I must be measured by my soul; 

The mind's the measure of the man." 



63 



THE MODERN DEITY. 



The Mad Race for Fun. 

Expert economists are constantly telling us that 
when hard times come upon us, the cause lies 
deeper than the currency or the tariff. It is 
found in waste, say they. Who can frame an 
argument to deny it? Where is there a more 
extravagant waste than in our follies? "An in- 
crease of one-tenth in demand is sufficient to 
change adversity into prosperity." But what of 
that w T hen every year we spend, as a nation, more 
than one-tenth of our product on drink alone? 
Sixty-three million barrels of beer were sold in 
the United States during the year ending June 
30, 1911, an increase over the preceding year of 
6.21%. Our national whisky bill for the same 
period, was $146,973,000, an increase of nearly 
$8,000,000, or 5.66%, and this in face of the fact 
that the spread of prohibition has effected the 
trade considerably. In a single city of 500,000 
inhabitants, no less than $20,000 was spent for 
champagne alone, and that on a single New Year's 
Eve. And while the chief city of the land was 
sending up a dismal wail over the thousands of 
her poor who go to bed hungry, yet $1,000,000 a 

61 



THE MODERN DEITY. 

night is what Gotham spends in revel and pleas- 
ure, and in one year New York City could 
spare $45,000,000 to spend at Coney Island, her 
great temple of fun, an amount six times 
what the United States paid for Alaska, and 
three times what was paid Napoleon for Louisi- 
ana. Who can measure what this would mean 
to our industries in the production of life's neces- 
sities? Factories would be literally swamped 
with orders, the hungry would be fed, and the 
bare feet shod. What we pay for our follies is 
greatly in excess of what we lack in life's neces- 
sities. It 

"* * * * drains our cellars dry, 
And keeps our larder clean; puts out our fires, 
And introduces hunger, frost, and -woe, 
Where peace and hospitality might reign." 

The New York Times published the following 
story, told by General Chaffee at a reception 
given in his honor by the militiamen at Pough- 
keepsie: Not long ago a soldier in the regular 
army stopped me on the street and asked me to 
lend him a quarter. 

"Why, yesterday you received your month's 
pay, did you not?" I asked. 

"Yes," replied the veteran. 

"Where's your money now?" 

65 



THE MODERN DEITY. 

"It's like this," he went on. "I met a friend 
and we had dinner. I was mightily surprised 
when the bill was $8. Then I bought $1 worth 
of cigars, and we went to the theater for $4. 
After the theater we went down the Bowery, and 
I spent $2 there." 

"That's $15," I replied. "What happened to 
that other 50 cents?" 

The old fellow seemed puzzled. Finally he 
answered : 

"I must have spent that foolishly/' 

In the mad race for fun how dearly men pay 
for the worthless prize ! The creed of the delud- 
ed worshipper at this shrine, "Let us eat, drink 
and be merry," is the spade that digs the grave 
for all that is best in manhood and womanhood. 
The only question in their catechism : "What is 
the chief end of man?" "To have a good time 
and seek fun forever/' is that which leads its 
blind devotees to spend exhorbitant amounts in 
rearing and maintaining its colossal temples with 
a liberality that puts Christendom to shame. That 
if a woman can lose enough sleep at parties to 
be sick all the day long, she is having the best 
time in her life ; and that if a man can put in his 
time at midnight orgies that will unfit him for 
the day's duty, he is at the top-notch of human 



THE MODERN DEITY. 

happiness. A standing head-line in Paris news- 
papers is, "Drames Passionels" — Tragedies from 
Passion. When the Germans invaded the city and 
the thunder of cannon roared through the streets, 
the people were engaged in witnessing plays in the 
theaters. And knowing what was going on with- 
out, yet wholly unconcerned, they rose en masse 
and shrieked, "Shut the doors and let the play 
go on." Alas ! Fox's "Book of Martyrs" would 
look like a penny pamphlet compared with the 
book that might be written of "Folly's Book of 
Martyrs," composed of the no less thrilling 
stories of the multitudes slain upon the altar of 
the goddess of fun. 



67 



THE MODERN DEITY. 



Vanitas Omnia Vanitas. 

Cleveland Moffett makes a fearful indictment 
on "The Shameful Misuse of Wealth." When the 
wife of a millionaire gives a banquet costing 
$50,000, the floral decorations alone costing $5,- 
000. When there are women who spend on 
clothes for poodle dogs $1,000 per annum; coats 
lined with ermine at $200 a piece, in which is a 
dear little pocket for the precious little poodle's 
handkerchief ; for boots of many colored leathers 
$5 to $10 a pair, and topped out with a collar, like 
a be jeweled necklace, set w T ith precious stones 
and valued at many hundreds of dollars. When 
sickness befalls the dear thing, a specialist is hur- 
ried to his bedside, and we are told that there are 
fashionable dog doctors who sleep with a tele- 
phone close to the ear, lest his canine majesty die 
before medical skill arrives ; while the only per- 
ceptible difference between the faithful watchdog 
which has nothing but fidelity to commend him, 
and the poodle dressed like a Queen Anne, is the 
vanity of its owner, who would say with pitiable, 
yet characteristic weakness, "I paid $3,000 for 
the heavenly creature." When death overtakes 

68 



THE MODERN DEITY. 

him, he is put in a satin-lined coffin, followed to 
the grave by his heart-broken mistress and hur- 
ried with human honors. In the face of such 
revelations we must wonder if we have gotten as 
far away from the extravangant vanities which 
characterized the times of the Caesars as we are 
wont to suppose ; and when we go still further 
and find that with vanity as the toastmaster of 
their extravagant feasts, we should temper our 
criticism of heathen Rome or of the days of Louis 
XIV, with the flavor of our own imitation of 
them. But the thing is far from amusing when 
we know that six hundred men go astray in a year 
as embezzlers, robbing the people of $25,000,000 
in the vain efifort to keep up expensive homes. 
And all this on the same principle, as some one 
has expressed it, "The only thing that keeps a lot 
of us from having a motor car, is the fact that we 
haven't anything to mortgage." Surely there is 
some truth in the statement that "luxury is the 
spade that has dug the grave of every nation that 
ever perished." 

Frivolity has been named as the besetting sin 
of womanhood. The general rule is in no way 
afifected by the fact that there are many noble 
and notable exceptions. "To amuse and be 
amused, to see and be seen, to follow in the train 

69 



THE MODERN DEITY. 

of fashion and turn life into a pageant or a song." 
What a mockery of the responsibilities of life ! 

"She that will eat her breakfast in her bed, 
And spend the morn in dressing of her head, 
And sit at dinner like a maiden bride, 
And talk of nothing but of pride; 
God in His mercy may do much to save her, 
But what a case is he in that shall have her." 

The only end of such existence is a tombstone 
bearing the pathetic inscription : "Vanity of 
Vanities." 

A husband who was reprimanded by his wife 
for looking about the church during prayer, said, 
"I was just counting to see if there were as many 
women closing their eyes as there were eyeing 
their clothes." Caring more for dress than dis- 
position, troubled more by an unfashionable hat 
than a neglected God, talking more with their 
dressmaker than with the Creator, and following 
the fashion-plate more closely than the Saviour. 
It reminds us of Biddy at her wedding. Patrick 
had on lavender trousers, and his first kid gloves, 
lavender too, and a new silk hat he know not 
what to do with. And Biddy was arrayed in 
splendor, with a vast picture-hat of the most 
picturesque, surmounted by a peck of roses that 
vied with the damask of her cheek. As they went 

70 



THE MODERN DEITY. 

up the aisle, Biddy trod on golden clouds. As 
they knelt at the altar, as they sat before it while 
mass was said, as they walked down the aisle, 
she caught glances, through her modestly down- 
cast lashes, of admiration that gave her sighs of 
rapture. At the door stood the populace, in as- 
sorted sizes and ages, applauding, and there was 
an open barouche adorned with streamers of 
white ribbon. As they rode away, Biddy leaned 
her head on Patrick's shoulder, regardless of the 
picture-hat, and said out of the fulness of her 
bursting heart : "O Paddy dear, wouldn't it be 
hivenly if we could just sthand on the sidewalk 
and see oursilves go by!" "A dream," some 
might call her, while in truth we would say "She's 
a hideous nightmare." Peacock-like and just as 
silly, for 

"The stupid sheep and silkworms wore 
That very clothing- long' before." 

Or what Emerson has called, "Sugar plums and 
cat's cradles, the toilet, compliments, quarrels, 
cards and custards, which rack the wit of all 
society;" people whose whole life is really con- 
cerned with, what he says, the one question, 
4 'What joys has kind nature provided for us dear 
creatures?" Frivolity at its highest development, 

71 



THE MODERN DEITY. 

and how silly it all is, to see what F. W. Robert- 
son calls "the spirit of childhood carried into 
manhood/' grown men and grown women, and 
the women no more than the men, for as one has 
observed, "I'm not denyin' the women are fool- 
ish, but God Almighty made 'em to match the 
men," still playing with their toys, their dolls 
and hoops, only the toys are called by a different 
name, such as dress and dine, fun and fame, and 
what Browning in "The Lost Leader" has pic- 
tured as the blinding dust to nobler things : 

"Just for a handful of silver, he left us, 
Just for a ribbon to stick in his coat." 

And we heartily agree with what Ruskin says 
in one of his essays : "A butterfly is much more 
free than a bee ; but you honor the bee more, 
because it is subject to certain laws, which fit it 
for orderly function in bee society." For what 
can be comparable to that slavery in which the 
butterfly of society is chained? We rehearse 
stories of Siberian atrocity until our blood runs 
cold. But there is one, but one absolute monarch 
— the czar of human opinion. The edict which 
he issues drags the will-o-the-whisp into a Siber- 
ian of littleness only faintly typified by the de- 
gradation of exile among those Asiatic moun- 

72 



THE MODERN DEITY. 

tains. The fashion of the world exiles finest 
thought; dungeons truest manhood and woman- 
hood ; rivets chain and ball on our loftiest aspira- 
tions; makes our feet fast in the stocks of its 
whims. It so vetoes independence that we dare 
not be free and genuine. Alas! there are none 
more abject slaves than they who are in slavery 
to things. Verily did the Master say, "The life 
is more than meat, and the body than raiment, 
for after all these things do the heathen seek/' 



73 



THE MODERN DEITY. 



God Still on the Field. 

The reason that some have branded the age as 
godless, is not that He is out of relation with it; 
that He has set it agoing, as one might start a 
machine, but left it to run itself according to es- 
tablished laws, or after its own wild will. Or as 
Tennyson pictures in the "Lotus Eaters," with 
the gods enjoying their nectar, and smiling at 
the sorrows and the woes of men. Xo, He has 
not left it, nor has He removed Himself from the 
fellowship of men. 

"He is no fable old nor mystic lore, 
Nor dream of bards and seers, 
Xo dead fact stranded on the shore 
Of the oblivious years. 

But warm, sweet, tender even yet, 

A present help is He; 
And faith has still its Olivet 

And love its Galilee." 

Ah, yes, He is still present. But men do not give 
Him a chance to reveal His interest in and love 
for them. Life is lived at such high pressure in 
these days; from morn till night, driven from 
pillar to post, and thus the days run on, and the 

74 



THE MODERN DEITY. 

weeks glide by, and the years slip away, when, 
lo, w r e are out of the world before we rightly 
know that we are in it. And yet, miracle of 
miracles, God is always wanting to talk to man. 
In the midst of this ail-too busy life, crushed by 
the mailing fury of business, God stands waiting, 
waiting for an audience with man. And while 
a thousand interests crowd and clamor for a hear- 
ing, God waits, standing, as it were, and leaning 
His hand on man's shoulder and saying, "A word 
with you." The Creator wanting to talk with 
the creature; God waiting, patiently waiting, for 
a word with man ; the heavenly Father asking 
an audience with His earthly child! What infi- 
nite condescension! What sublime stooping! 
And because we are so pre-occupied, what a time 
He has to have a word with us, and it is only 
when He talks out loud that He gets our ear, 
then we think we hear Him. Elijah-like we hear 
the hurricane, roaring and crashing and tearing 
by ; and the earthquake that shakes the earth and 
quivers among the hills; and the fire, scorching 
and burning and devastating; but God was not 
in these, awe-inspiring and thought-provoking 
though they seemed. But it is in the "still small 
voice" that He is heard. He does speak out 
loud if He cannot otherwise divert our atten- 
75 



THE MODERN DEITY. 

tion, and we, I trust, may still hear the echo 
of it in those outspoken events in our history. 
But we may be sure that it is only when men 
will not hear that He enjoins us with some Sinai 
or Jerusalem fall, and this is because we are so 
deaf. Nobody can help hearing the clamorous 
and the gustatory, but it is the gentler method 
that He wishes to prevail, the method of the 
"quiet talk." 

"Unheard, because our ears are dull, 
Unseen, because our eyes are dim, 
He walks the earth — the Wonderful — 
And all great deeds are done for Him." 

In 1861 when a minister wrote Secretary 
Chase of the United States Treasury in refer- 
ence to some recognition of God in our national 
currency, Mr. Chase immediately wrote the direc- 
tor of the Mint in these words : "No nation can 
be strong except in the strength of God, and this 
truth should be declared in our currency. " And 
out of this came the inscription on our coins, "In 
God We Trust/' In recent years, for good and 
sufficient reasons, as he thought, Mr. Roosevelt 
directed that this inscription should be done 
away. At this the whole land was wrought up 
to a state of ferment which flooded Congress 

76 



THE MODERN DEITY. 

with such monster petitions and memorials, that 
the words were at once restored. This may well 
be taken as an expression by the people, in the 
belief that it not the gold mined in California or 
Klondike, not the crisp greenbacks with the gov- 
ernmental guarantee written across their face, 
not our army nor our fleets of grim gray battle- 
ships that constitute the buhvarks of our land, 
nor protect us from imminent disaster, but to 
lose God in the midst of these things, to lose that 
sensitiveness of conscience which enables us to 
properly label right and wrong, to lose these, 
there is nothing that will save us. 

"Far called our navies melt away; 
On dune and headland sinks the fire; 
Lo! all the pomp of yesterday- 
Is one with Ninevah and Tyre. 
Judge of the nations, spare us yet, 
Lest we forget! Lest we forget!" 



77 



THE MODERN DEITY. 



The Christian Church. 



The much-discussed and now time-worn 
phrase, " What's the matter with the Church ?" 
is, after all, a fallacious and an all-misleading 
question, as though the trend of the times must 
be laid at her door. It is a very common sin of 
humanity to blame others rather than to blame 
oneself. The people who continually find fault 
with other's faults, seldom find fault with their 
own fault. Adam blamed Eve, Eve blamed the 
serpent, the serpent blamed the devil, the elder 
son blamed the younger, and none of them blamed 
themselves. In a similar way, the Church is 
constantly having thrust at her such interroga- 
tions as these : "Why is the Church not more 
attractive?" "Other institutions draw, why does 
the Church fail?" "What has happened to her 
once honored power?" "Why has she lost her 
grip of the masses?" And to this end remedial ad- 
vise has poured into the Church in a copious and 
perennial stream, dividing itself into two promin- 
ent channels, viz. : 

Secularize the Church. Only make the church 

78 



THE MODERN DEITY. 

as much like a grand palace of worldly amuse- 
ment as possible; let her pulpit ministrations be 
in the hands of a Lyceum Bureau, her music in 
the control of an opera manager, and then she 
will see the people flocking to her altar like doves 
to their windows. 

Spiritualize the Church! We are constantly 
being told, by those who at least, profess to know, 
"preach the pure and simple Gospel and the 
churches will be filled." But men who know, 
have grown weary of such blatant ignorance, be- 
cause it isn't true, and there never was a time 
when it was less true than now. The Gospel is 
the thing people do not want. Indeed, there is 
vastly more of this type of preaching in our 
evangelical pulpits than is usually credited to 
them, and churches where "gospel preaching" is 
the weekly attraction are by no means "pushed" 
for room. 

The truth is, however, that any church can be 
filled by any or all of the following features, and 
when they have been put in operation have se- 
cured the desired end: a prima donna in the 
choir ; a vaudeville on the platform ; an acrobatic 
clown in the pulpit, or cake and coffee in the 
refectory. These will scarcely ever fail to draw. 
They will ever appeal to the throng that finds its 

79 



THE MODERN DEITY. 

religion in the comic pages of the Sunday paper, 
and that decides its heaven or its hell in accord- 
ance with the scores of the baseball returns. But 
the people of higher aspirations and worthier 
ideals, these are the people in every community 
who seek the Church, and there find answer to 
the conscious hunger of their immortal souls. 
The godless do not go to church. It has no in- 
terest to them. A show to them is better. And 
while we are in no way pronouncing a wholesale 
condemnation upon these things as essentially 
evil, in themselves, nor advocating as reaction- 
ists, a restoration of Puritanic days, to stagnate 
in some sleepy-hollow and dream our lives away 
in some realm of ethereal bliss ! No, not that. But 
the Church is not going into competition with 
the world in affording attractions which appeal 
to the carnality of the crowd who have, forsooth, 
put out their spiritual eyes, and closed their un- 
derstanding ears to the vision and the voice of 
higher things. Indeed, there is nothing in psycho- 
logy truer than what George Eliot has said, "You 
cannot entertain God and the devil on the same 
floor and on equal terms." And while the Church 
is prophesied to lose in the spectacular display 
of the crowd, the Church which cares more to 

80 



THE MODERN DEITY. 

woo a soul than to court a grin can well afford 
to lose, when such a \oss is her truest gain. 

Perhaps the cause of her so-called weakness, 
if that is the accusation, may be said to lie in the 
fact, that whenever she has attempted to do her 
Lord's work with the devil's tools, she has in- 
variably been shorn of her power. That the 
modern deity has in many instances crept into 
her fold, is pitiable but true. Many churches are 
little more than social organizations of baptized 
worldlings, who care nothing for either creed or 
deed. The building to be "modern" must have a 
well-appointed kitchen, dining-room and parlor 
wherein to eat, drink and be merry, and to en- 
tertain those who "mind earthly things." Those 
who absent themselves from the prayer meetings 
and other spiritual services of the church, are 
sure to be on hand when a "good time" is an- 
nounced, then it is that the church draws — the 
"wood, hay and the stubble" are in conspicious 
evidence — the combustible material ; while the 
meetings purely for worship are attended by "the 
faithful few" — and these are the "gold, silver 
and precious stones" — the enduring fabric out of 
which the Kingdom of God is built. And is it 
not all too true, that there are even ministers 
who give messages to classes — sometimes to this 

81 



THE MODERN DEITY. 

class and then to that — and instead of "rightly 
dividing the word of truth" cut it on the bias to 
suit what people want, rather than what they 
need ? Like the divinity student of whom I read. 
He went from the seminary to preach a trial 
sermon, and, on his return, was greeted by one of 
the professors with, "How did you get on with 
your sermon?" "First rate, first rate," said the 
young man. "What was your text?" asked the 
professor. "How shall we escape if we neglect 
so great salvation.'' "A good text," said the 
professor. "How did you treat it?" "First," 
said the student, "I showed 'em how great this 
salvation is." "That's excellent," said the man of 
wisdom, beaming his approval with face 
wreathed in smiles. "And, second, I showed 
'em how to escape if they neglected it." And 
there are those who, by their catering methods, 
are doing little else than that, and exercising their 
gifts in such a way as to further the success of 
an entrenched godlessness. 

There is no "Conflict between religion and 
the church" as some magazine writers would 
have us believe. A dislike for religious things 
is the disease with which the age is terribly 
afflicted, manifesting itself in a cold indifference 
to the Church, the Church which has ever stood 

82 



THE MODERN DEITY. 

as the champion of our priceless liberties and the 
protector of all our human rights. With all the 
railing accusations, both of friends and foes, the 
Church is still the power to which we look in the 
manufacture of character, and without which, 
the community would be a sorry place indeed. 
The sea captain who, when he came to the village 
on the sea coast, insisted on paying $10 to the 
church, although he did not attend himself, was 
asked his reasons for so doing, and said, that he 
had been in the habit of carrying cargoes of oys- 
ters and clams from that place, and found, since 
the church was built, the people were more honest 
than they used to be, for before the church was 
built, he often found the cargo, when he came to 
count it, a thousand clams short. That there is a 
power in a living Christianity, which even its 
enemies are unable to deny, can be seen in such 
characters as Charteris, a notorious scoundrel of 
his time, who once said to a man distinguished 
for his religious principles, "I would give a thou- 
sand pounds to have your good character." And 
when asked why, replied, "Because I could make 
ten thousand pounds by it." Indeed, scoffers 
have sometimes been the first to fall upon their 
knees when danger overwhelmed them, and after 
it had passed, laugh at themselves for such pro- 

83 



THE MODERN DEITY. 

testations of piety. As old Seneca said, "They 
deny God by day, but own Him at night," and all 
the arguments which men have used against the 
Church and her teachings have melted away in 
the season of their extremity. 

But character is not a matter of circumstantial 
evidence. It does not consist in having a Bible 
in the house in case of sickness, quoting scrip- 
ture in defense of personal aggrandizement, (the 
devil does that) nor even in paying the preacher, 
any more than having a sword, or reciting the 
Constitution or paying taxes makes a man a 
soldier 

A man may cry 'Christ! Christ!' 
With no more piety than other people; 
A crow's not counted a religious bird 
Because it keeps a-cawing from a steeple." 

Sincerity must ever be its test. Nor is it found 
in what Gratiano said, 

"I will put on a sober habit, 

Talk with respect, wear prayer-book in my pocket 

look demurely, 
Nay more, while grace is saying, hood mine eyes 

thus with my hat and sigh and say, 'Amen/ ' 

To pose under the guise of the genuine, is to 
build a reputation on the cheap unrealities of 
life. AYhile this is so, what shall we say of the 

84 



THE MODERN DEITY. 

frightful picture one might draw, on the impend- 
ing calamities of the unchurched multitudes, who 
think no more of God? Think of the mighty 
army to whom the church has no attraction! 
Imagine a world without God! Conscience as 
dead as a lifeless form, and the soul virtually 
buried beneath the derbis of evil inclinations. 
Tennyson has drawn that picture in his "Holy 
Grail," and VanDyke in his "Blue Flower," but 
for a real picture you must read Carlyle's 
"Bloody Days of the French Revolution," and 
there you see the inevitable result of a people 
logically trying to live without God. Goths in 
feelings, and Vandals in customs, must be the 
only end of the mass of the unchurched, who 
while the ringing of the church bells calls the 
devout to prayer and praise, but signals them to 
their god-forgotten mirth and orgies. No God, 
no soul, no Sabbath, retribution but the figment 
of the inflamed imagination, and heaven though 
grand, only a vast delusion. 

History is still repeating itself in this fact, 
that the Church has, ever and anon, felt the 
fluctuations of the impoverishment and prosper- 
ity of the periods through which she has passed, 
the ebb and flow of material weal and woe have 
been constantly throbbing through her life. It 

85 



THE MODERN DEITY. 

has been demonstrated all along the years, that 
the world's stringent times have been her best 
times; that the seasons of the closed shop and 
the poor crop was and is the seasons when her 
spiritual thermometer registers highest. It is 
when we are in the midst of plenty that God sees 
little of us, and because we have no desire to see 
much of Him. When the flour barrel is all but 
empty, and the hungry wolf stands grinning at 
the door, we are then quite willing to discount 
our independency of God and creep up close to 
His all-forgotten love. Such people are constant- 
ly reversing what one said to a friend, "When 
you see me getting prosperous, pray for my 
soul." Therein lies the danger. While poverty 
may not be the greatest calamity, prosperity may 
be the greatest curse. The material prosperity 
of men has never been conducive to the highest 
interests of the Church, nor can we say vital to 
her real life. And because religion has been so 
largely buried beneath the debris of "things" in 
the prosperous life of the many, the accusation 
that the Church has lost her power is groundless. 
Let blight, depression, disaster, or money-panic 
occur, and the noisy alarmist has suddenly turned 
dumb. 

And yet, men surrounded by all the charms of 

86 



THE MODERN DEITY. 

luxury, having every wish gratified, and every 
desire fulfilled, they walk the earth the moving 
monuments of woe. The facts are all against 
the supposition that happiness depends upon 
material wealth. It has been frequently shown, 
that the more prosperous a man is, the fewer 
were his hours of pleasure. The man who has 
thousands at his command, who is enabled to 
view extensive fields, watch for an upward flight 
in stocks, cannot have the happiness of the com- 
mon day laborer, who owns not the roof which 
covers him, and who scarcely knows how long 
he shall have food for his children. The one 
may have much coin, but it is mingled with 
crushing care. The other, may have penury, but 
it is mingled with peace. The one trusts in the 
income of his stocks, in the safety of his invest- 
ments; the other, is more likely to trust in God 
who heareth the young ravens when they cry, 
and looks for food and raiment to the 

"Glorious Giver, who doeth all things well." 
The highest pinnacle of earthly ambition has 
been attained, but the "aching void" has not been 
filled. The loudest blast of fame's burnished 
trumpet, cannot make melody to a heart op- 
pressed with sorrow and bow r ed with grief. All 
the gold found in newly discovered mines, cannot 

87 



THE MODERN DEITY. 

drive away sorrow's unbidden tear that rushes 
into the temple of the soul. These are but the 
outer scaffolding; within is the real structure. 
To bodily interests there must be added an un- 
defined plus, and to this higher self man owes 
his chief duty and his utmost solicitation, be- 
cause all other responsibilities, whatever they are, 
focus there. These outer things are often like 
the feathers of the jay, and the skin of the 
adder. The pleasant plumage does not make the 
one sing more sweetly ; the painted skin does not 
detract from the poisonous nature of the other. 
An inner nature hungers for food which cannot 
be appeased with the fruits of the labor of one's 
hands or the genius of one's mind; its nourish- 
ment is not crushed from earthly seeds, nor its 
covering woven in earthly looms. 



88 



THE MODERN DEITY. 



Heart Hunger. 



All of the foregoing has been said to simply 
show that the poor, befooled and silly world in 
its sober moments, knows full well that its buy- 
ing and selling, its eating and drinking, its get- 
ting and having, this game of life, does not com- 
pass life's scheme, unless we must prove to men 
that they have souls. Tell a man today that he 
has a soul and he will think you are crazy, and 
regard your proffered information as an insult 
to his intelligence. Man has a tripartite nature. 
In common with the animal he has, on the lowest 
plane, a material body. That which differenti- 
ates him from all other forms of organisms, 
however, is the fact that he is possessed of a 
spirit in the similitude of God. While on the 
mediate plane he is endowed with a living and 
rational soul, the nexus betwen body and spirit. 
Each department, or nature, must be fed with 
nutriment adapted to its need — the material body 
with the chemical, the mind with thought and the 
spirit with God. When the physical degenerates 
into a prodigal, leaves the Father's table to roam 
in the far-country and feds among the swine of 

89 



THE MODERN DEITY. 

sensual and voluptuous indulgence, then the 
scared temple of the body is overrun with thieves. 
When the soul pushes back its chair from the 
banqueting-table of honor, truth and virtue, and 
goes forth to breathe the miasma in the swamps 
of envy, greed, self-seeking, and all that is 
scorned by our better instincts, then the curtains 
have been drawn on the windows against the 
light, and the darkness of the darkest night has 
come. And when the spirit which constantly 
clamors for its native diet, its craving answered 
only by denial of converse with God and com- 
munion with heaven, life's greatest tragedy has 
occurred and the obituary of the spirit is written, 
for death, more tragic than that which knocks 
with icy knuckles at our home door, must be the 
inevitable result. 

It is this immortal hunger, oftentimes coming 
confusingly, indeed, upon men, which makes all 
mere things too childish to satisfy. An inex- 
plicable longing comes a-tugging at the heart, 
which seems to say that life has loftier, yea, 
moral values ; that the world of bread for the 
body is but the one-half of life, and its meanest 
half at that. It comes to all men, sometime, 
when worldly interests make us positively weary, 
and feel like the old and dissipated Marquis of 

90 



THE MODERN DEITY. 

Queensbury who would sit in his fine house at 
Twickenham and, looking out on the Thames, 
murmuring so pleasantly along, could only say, 
"I am sick of hearing people praise that eternal 
river; it does nothing but flow, flow, flow." Or, 
like the gay Lord Chesterfield, who said, "I have 
run the silly rounds of business and pleasure, and 
have done with them all. I have enjoyed all 
the pleasures of the world, and consequently 
know their futility, and do not regret their loss. 
I appraise them at their real value, which is very 
low; whereas those w T ho have not experienced 
them always overrate them. They only see the 
gay outside and are dazzled with the glare; but 
I have been behind the scenes and have seen all 
the coarse pulleys and dirty ropes which exhibit 
and move the gaudy machine. I have seen and 
smelt the tallow candles which illuminate the 
whole decorations, to the astonishment and ad- 
miration of an ignorant audience. I look back on 
all that is past as one of those romantic dreams 
which opium commonly produces, and I have no 
wish to repeat the nauseous dose. Shall I say 
that I bear this with resignation? No, I bear it 
because I must, whether I will or no. I think 
of nothing but killing time the best way I can, 
now that it has become my enemy." What a 

91 



THE MODERN DEITY. 

melancholy confession, from a man who had 
everything, one would think, that earth could 
provide to make one happy! 

It has been proved over and over again and 
from times immemorial, that things external can- 
not secure permanent peace and pleasure. 

"The conscious mind is its ozvn azvful world," 

and if this be in commotion no outward circum- 
stance, however beautiful and pleasing, can give 
it rest. The Koran of Mohammed has this 
strange fable about Abraham. When he set out 
upon his journeys, he had no knowledge of re- 
ligious truth. He looked up and saw the even- 
ing star and said to his followers, "That is my 
God." But the star went down, and he said, "I 
care not for any gods that set." By and by the 
grand constellations appeared, and he said, 
"These are my gods." But the galaxies of stars 
were carried beneath the west; and again he 
said, "I will have no gods that set." But the 
moon arose, and he exclaimed, "This is my god." 
But the moon, too, went down. Then, when the 
sun arose he saluted it as Divine ; but the wheel- 
ing sky carried the king of day away behind the 
pine-tops of the rosy-tinted west. Then Abra- 
ham, in the holy twilight, turning his face upward 

92 



THE MODERN DEITY. 

toward the serene and tranquil empyrean, ex- 
claimed, "I give myself to Him who was, and 
is, and is to come, Father of the sun and moon 
and stars, who never sets, for He only is the 
everlasting Light." 

What then is the antidote to the disease of 
the age? It was a wise word, indeed, that Apol- 
lodorus placed over the entrance of his studio : 

" 'Tis no hard thing to reprehend me, 
But let the man that blames me mend me." 

How are we to resist the prevailing influences 
of the times ? How escape the hardening process 
of the age? In the most logical way, to be sure. 
We resist the contagion of an epidemic, the 
stealthy grip of a malaria, by the reserve power 
of an abundant vitality, by fortifying the powers 
of life, by buttressing the life within. We are 
to remember that "the life is more than meat." 
That a man's life does not consist "in the abun- 
dance of his possessions." And as George Mac- 
donald has so well put it, "To have what we want 
is riches, but to be able to do without is power." 
Many of the world's great saints are among its 
poor, with few of its luxuries. A coarse and 
patched garment may cover their bodies, but a 
costly white robe enwraps their souls. They may 

93 



THE MODERN DEITY. 

sojourn in a humble cabin, but they dwell in a 
mansion. They may lunch on a crust, but they 
feast at a banquet. They may be embiciles in 
body, but strong in soul; feeble in intellect, but 
healthful in heart ; despised of men, but honored 
of God. In their external appearance there may 
be absolutely nothing for the world to envy ; but 
in their character and prospects there is some- 
thing for angels to admire. At their funeral 
there may be few to mourn, the casket of a plain 
and simple covering, but the contents are precious 
jewels to God. The man who gets and holds 
the mountains of earth's possessions may think 
he has the game of life all his way; but the man 
of power, the man who "can do without,'' will 
have his innings. 

And thank God, there are such still. The 
world stands back and wonders how they can so 
easily set aside that for which the multitudes 
make their chief object — the "bread" which the 
world values so highly. The Divine Master ex- 
pressed it in answer to the wondering disciples, 
when He said, k T have meat to eat that ye know 
not of — in possession of an inner satisfaction 
which the world knows nothing about. Such an 
one partakes of a hidden manna, the meat of 
whose strength lesser and ignoble souls are abso- 

94 



THE MODERN DEITY. 

lutely ignorant. To repose in inglorious ease, 
to conform for comfort's sake, to tone down 
conscience and seek the husks upon which prodi- 
gals from God's will must feed, is only to discover 
in the awakening, that they have sold themselves 
for naught, and labored for that which satisfieth 
not. But the banquet which the Christ provides 
for the soul's eternal nourishment is that alone 
which will secure for men immunity to the se- 
ductive temptations, the attractive and fascinat- 
ing idols of the world. For the Kingdom of 
God and His righteousness are infintely worthy 
of our seeking, it puts things in their proper 
place, it instructs us how to use the world with- 
out abusing it, and business, commerce, fun, 
fame and money, even success itself, shall min- 
ister to us, but not enslave us; shall embellish 
life, but not absorb it, and perchance, add all 
these things to our possessions, and yet leave 
strong and pure within the life of God. 

Robert Burns never wrote a truer word than 
that which he sent to a friend : 

"When rantin' roun' in pleasure's ring-. 

Religion may be blinded; 
But if she gie a random sting, 

But little may be minded. 
But when on life we're tempest-tossed, 

And conscience but a canker, 

A correspondence fixed wi' Hcazen 

Is sure a noble anchor." 

95 



THE MODERN DEITY. 

This "correspondence fixed wi' heaven," this 
is the bulwark against which the fiercest tides of 
life may beat but not destroy; the strength that 
will withstand the onslaughts of every tempting 
bit of "bread" the world may throw before our 
eyes ; the "anchor of the soul" that will hold both 
sure and steadfast. So said Mr. Gladstone: 
"Whatever I may think of the pursuits of indus- 
try and science, and of the triumphs and glories 
of art, I do not mention any one of these as the 
great specific for alleviating the sorrows of hu- 
man life, and encountering the evils which deface 
the world. If I am asked what is the remedy for 
the deepest sorrows of the human heart, what a 
man should chiefly look to in his progress through 
life, as the power that is to sustain him under 
trials, and enable him manfully to confront his 
afflictions, I must point to something very dif- 
ferent — to something which, in a well-known 
hymn, is called 'The Old, Old Story,' told of in 
an old, old Book, and taught with an old, old 
teaching, which is the greatest gift ever given to 
mankind." To what must men turn, disheart- 
ened, remorseful and all but disgusted, in the 
hour when disaster descends with its overwhelm- 
ing and merciless cruelties, only to what too 
many turn as their only alternative, 

96 



THE MODERN DEITY. 
"Anywhere, anywhere, out of the world." 

Or, as the ragged urchin put it, whom a good 
man met in the street, and, putting his hand on 
his head, said : "My little man, when your father 
and your mother forsake you, who will take you 
up?" And with characteristic innocence the lad 
replied, "The perlice, sir." And this may well 
be taken as the prevailing logic of the times. A 
rank atheism knows of nothing better in the hour 
of distress. And may God pity the age which 
can turn to nothing else in its time of deepest 
trials than that which incites to a diatribe against 
the Almighty, or takes upon itself the responsi- 
bility of its own self-destruction! 



97 



THE MODERN DEITY. 



Back to the Father. 



This can be the only prescription. If the age 
which moves slow finds God, the balm for its ugly 
wounds; and gets glimpses of another world, 
even a heavenly, the lotion for its wearied eyes ; 
and hears, even faintly, the voice that spoke into 
being the things that are; if sorrowing and suf- 
fering men and women feel the omnipotent yet 
gentle arm of a Father folding them in His 
bosom, and hushing the tempests of their sad 
and aching hearts into eternal calm with the lul- 
laby of His heavenly peace, is the age not more 
fortunate; more eminently and pre-eminently 
prosperous than the age which boasts of having 
astonished the wildest dreams of the mystic, 
merely by the swiftness of its movement, or the 
multiplication of its wealth ? Such holy ambition 
is the only one worthy of our manhood and 
womanhood. To leave God out of the reckon- 
ing, the God in whose image and likeness we 
were created, is to be unworthy of our birth- 
right. Let us remember that we are still the 
children of a Heavenly Father. When one of the 
sovereigns of France was approached with a re- 

98 



THE MODERN DEITY. 

quest to sign a dishonorable measure, he an- 
swered, "The blood of Charlemagne runs 
through my veins. How dare you thus 
affront me?" And we read that Themis- 
tocles was asked one day by one of his soldiers 
why he did not gather the spoils which the enemy 
had left behind in their sudden flight, and in an- 
swer said, "Thou mayest, for thou art not 
Themistocles." And when a man thoughtfully 
considers his Divine lineage and listens to the 
call of God's voice, he will ever regard as be- 
neath him that for which the thoughtless throng 
scramble to secure. And like the pilgrim in 
Bunyan's immortal allegory, escaping from the 
City of Destruction with the vision of heaven 
looming up before him ran with all his might, 
and stuffing his fingers into his ears that he 
might shut out the dissuading voices of friends 
and kinsmen, cried, "Life! Life! Eternal Life!" 

Alfred Lord Tennyson was born in a parson- 
age. In college he fell on evil days when doubts 
shut out his horizon. But death taking away 
Arthur Hallam, his gifted friend, struck the sun 
out of his sky. It was standing by the fast 
failing breath, however, that he listened to that 
confession of heart-hunger and the secret of its 
satisfaction when the dying man said: "Lord, I 

99 



THE MODERN DEITY. 

have viewed this world all over. I have tried 
how this thing or that will fit my spirit. I can 
find nothing to rest on; for nothing here hath 
any rest itself. Oh, Blessed Jesus — center of 
light and strength — I come back and join myself 
to Thee and to Thee alone." And out of his 
pain and anguish, his doubts vanished, and Ten- 
nyson climbed "up the world's altar stairs that 
slope through darkness up to God." It is said 
of Louis XIV. that he was the richest and most 
powerful monarch in Europe. His country pal- 
ace of St. Germain was the most luxurious in 
external architecture and of internal adornment 
which it was possible for wealth to procure. 
Fountains played throughout his groves and 
blooming gardens and verdent lawns, while 
through the valley below, like a strip of silver rib- 
bon wound the River Seine. Only a few miles to 
the north lay Paris, the beautiful. But like the 
Prince of Abyssinia, in happy valley, Louis was 
never happy. Indeed, he dreaded to go there, 
and while there he was constantly watched and 
hurried away as soon as possible. Why? Ah, 
only a few miles to the northwest the great cathe- 
dral of St. Dennis always stared into his face. 
There was the massive tower which he could 
not avoid seeing. Beneath that tower were the 

100 



THE MODERN DEITY. 

gloomy vaults of the kings of France. He could 
not endure the sight, yet could not escape it. 
Whether he stepped upon the balcony or peered 
out of the window, by sunlight or by moonlight, 
there rose the lofty spire of St. Dennis, point- 
ing to the final tribunal and silently saying, 
"You, too, must die." Well, he abandoned Saint 
Germain and reared for himself a splendid man- 
sion at Versailles, where the haunting specter of 
St. Dennis' tower was no longer in view. Yet he 
was none the happier. Poor Louis, it was not 
the gloomy tower with its vaults of the dead 
beneath that caused his unrest! No, not that. 
But a far deeper reality which he had failed to 
discover. 

"This world can never give 
The rest for which we sigh; 
'Tis not the whole of life to live, 
Nor all of death to die." 

It is the soul's story in every age. The body 
may find its satisfaction in things. The raven 
which Noah sent forth found satisfaction in the 
carcasses of the dead floating upon the great 
waste, and so never returned. Not so the dove. 
It came back, finding no rest but in the con- 
fines of the ark. The soul is dovelike in this, 
that it cannot find in things the satisfaction 

101 



THE MODERN DEITY. 

which its pure and holy intention demands, and 
finds it not until it rests in the ark of God. Stories 
of famine in India, or the starving multitudes in 
Russia would grow pale before the heart-break- 
ing tale of the soul, should it tell its pathetic 
story. Here is the modern parable of life. The 
man is holding a dialogue with his soul. "Soul, 
I have much goods laid up for many years; I 
have a magnificent farm and a clear title to it. 
I have it well stocked with flocks the rarest. The 
barns are all new. By my industry and dili- 
gence my crops have yielded an hundred fold, 
and since I pulled down the old barns and built 
greater, the granaries contain enough for time to 
come. I take pride in saying that I am greatly 
pleased at what I have done. Now, soul, I want 
to lay all at thy feet; come and join me in a life 
of ease from care, a life of wholesale indulgence ; 
come, "Soul, take thine ease; let us eat, drink 
and be merry." 

Now the soul has something to say : "Man, 
thou surely meanest well, as man, but your words 
are insulting ; you are either ignorant, debased or 
a fool. You evidently underestimate me, for I 
am infinitely above 'enlarged barns' and bursting 
granaries. I, a soul, would starve to death if 
doomed to subsist on these. You seek to degrade 

102 



THE MODERN DEITY. 

me, to brutalize me. 'Much goods' is all you 
have to offer me, and what will 'goods' do for 
me, even 'much goods/ before the great and final 
tribunal ? I can get along famously without your 
'goods/ but I shall fail utterly, an eternal bank- 
rupt without God. And as for 'ease' with which 
you would entice me, there is no such thing as 
ease to a living and an abounding soul. My na- 
tive sphere is not in ease, but to climb — 

"Climbing- up new Calvarys ever 
With the Cross that turns not back." 

Your selfish comfort and pleasure are the great 
ends for which, you think, the universe exists. 
Your personal pronouns of "my barns," "my 
goods," have altogether shut God out of your 
reckoning. And while you are gleefully cal- 
culating on taking your ease, eating, drinking and 
making merry, listen, "thou fool! this night thy 
soul shall be required of thee, then whose shall 
these be which thou hast laid up?" When 
God calls a man a "fool" he never rallies from 
the indictment. And the man who thinks he 
carries the key to heaven in bank vault or pants 
pocket will find that it fits the wrong door. Such 
a man cannot enjoy the money he has on earth; 
he can't take it with him ; and if he could it would 

103 



THE MODERN DEITY. 

do him no good — it would burn. And like Alex- 
ander the Great, who, when he came to die, di- 
rected that he should be buried with his hands 
outside his shroud, so that all might see that of 
all he had come to possess he carried none of it 
away with him. 

In the old cathedral at Elgin, there is a quaint 
epitaph, carved on a slab on the wall : 

"This world is a city full of streets; 
And death is the market that all men meets; 
If life were a thing that money could buy, 
The poor could not live and the rich would not 
die." 

If a man without a body would be a ghost, a 
man without a mind would be a fool, it is per- 
fectly within the lines of logic to say that a man 
without a religious life would be a brute. You 
need more than paint and brush and palette to 
make a picture — you need light. You need more 
than pen, ink and paper to write a book — you 
need brains. You need more than food, raiment 
and gymnastics to build a body — you need air. 
You need more to make a man than physical ele- 
ments or the knowledge of the senses — you can- 
not make manhood without a soul, and the soul 
is the sixth sense to which Infinite power is 

104 



THE MODERN DEITY. 

vouchsafed, and which alone can give life value. 
Human life needs a helmsman. It needs a moral 
dynamic. It needs an extra-human energy to 
counteract the current. It needs a force within 
to breast the drift. In a word, it needs God in 
the life, and He is all that and more. And it is 
"every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of 
God" that must give to life its meaning, if it is 
to have any meaning at all. This is what Tenny- 
son meant when he said : 

"For what are men better than sheep or goats, 
If, knowing- God, they lift not hands of prayer?" 

Let us be sure that all the unrest of nations, 
the clamor against existing evils, the ceaseless 
throbbing of its confusing strife, the mad rush 
to and fro among mankind, is but the outward 
expression of an inward craving, a desire for 
better and higher things than they now possess, 
an unsatisfied hunger which nothing else can ever 
put to rest. A hungering and a thirsting after 
something, shall we say, a righteousness? Yes, 
for beneath all other hungers, down, far down in 
the secret recesses of the soul whose hallowed 
courts no one may tread but ourselves and God, 
down there buried ever so deeply that it often- 
times eludes our knowledge, there lies a hunger, 

105 



THE MODERN DEITY. 

not consciously righteous, perhaps, yet none the 
less real, a craving after that which will alone 
bring to the life its heritage of tranquility and its 
legacy of peace. A peace that is as calm as a 
river. The peace of Him who said: "Peace I 
leave with you; My peace I give unto you, not 
as the world giveth, give I unto you/' The 
heathen, ignorant of the true and the living God, 
seeks to satisfy this same human longing, this 
same divine instinct in dreary and long-continued 
prostrations before his man-made idol, for 

"In even savage bosoms 
There are longings, yearnings, strivings 
For the good they comprehend not." 

And all these strange, undefined and restless 
movements of men, these eager and unhallowed 
aspirations, if rightly interpreted, would but re- 
veal them to be a panting of the soul after God. 
For 

"One accent of the Holy Ghost 
The heedless world hath never lost." 

And to get back to Him who said, "I am the 
Bread of Life," this is the secret of inexhaustible 
happiness, the unquestionable answer to our hu- 
man cravings, and the ultimate satisfaction of 
every life. It is written, "Man shall not live 

106 



THE MODERN DEITY. 

by bread alone, but by every word that proceed- 
eth out of the mouth of God." It was true in the 
history of Israel; true in the beginning of the 
Christian era ; true now. It was a devil that at- 
tempted to discount it; it is demoniacal to do so 
now. And in a time when the life of man must 
be lived in the midst of organized iniquity, in one 
form or another, there is but one recourse, and 
men, who are men, must stand with the Christ 
and "stick to God in stable trust," for 

"He always wins who sides with God; 
For him no chance is lost." 

If men doubt this, let them recall what Queen 
Elizabeth told the merchant to whom she had 
given an important commission. The merchant 
objected: "What will become of my business if 
I undertake this ?" "You attend to my business," 
said the majestic monarch, "and I will take 
charge of your affairs." My dear reader, that 
will be your good fortune if you put first things 
first; namely, "every word that proceedeth out of 
the mouth of God." 

If men will but shut out of their ears the in- 
cessant clatter, the rumbling grind, the shrieking 
voices of the world's all-absorbing interests, they 
will hear another voice, a voice exactly meant to 

107 



THE MODERN DEITY. 

guide them out of earth's shams into all truth; 
out of sin into righteousness; out of doom into 
bliss ; out of the parched desert into God's green 
pastures, and beside the still waters of His peace. 
It is the voice of the Good Shepherd, who calls 
all His sheep by name, and who said : "My sheep 
hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow 
Me; and I give unto them eternal life; and they 
shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck 
them out of my hand." As of yore, the voice of 
Jesus sounds o'er land and sea: "Whosoever 
drinketh of this water shall thirst again; but 
whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give 
him shall never thirst." Let men hear that voice. 
Do you hear it ? 

"O, may I join the choir invisible 
Of those immortal dead, who live again 
In minds made better by their presence; live 
In pulses stirred to generosity, 
In deeds of daring rectitude, in scorn 
For miserable aims that end with self, 
In thoughts sublime that pierce the night like 

stars. 
And with their mild persistence urge men's search 
To vaster issues." 



108 



DEC 11 1911 



VS 



One cppy d«l» t0 Cat - DiVl 
DEC 11 ,9M 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 

019 971 752 2 



